Music Music Music

I’ve been noticing a lot lately about the idea of brain plasticity. That is to say, the idea that the brain is able to form new connections/pathways fairly easily, at least compared to what had been thought. And about ways to keep your brain more flexible. In general, as we get older, habits of thought seem to get engrained, and it becomes harder to think in new ways. When I was little, my dad used to tell me often about how my grandpa was a bit technophobic. One of my favorite bits was about how he related to cars. He used to buy one, and the proceed to pretty much run it into the ground. When it finally broke down, he’d have it hauled away and buy a new one. He never did much maintenance on his car either. My dad, who was interested in cars, never quite got that. It almost seems “horse-like” to me now, which does strike me as pretty wild, when you stop and think about it.

Every so often now, I notice my parents struggling with certain aspects of all this great technology that permeates our lives these days. It’s especially noticeable with computers, but carries over sometimes into other things, like cell phones, or the TV, etc. I suppose that it’s all what you’re used to, and technology certainly moves faster nowadays, but I started to take a look at myself, and how I relate to technology. I wasn’t really thinking of myself as old, but certainly, I was starting to see aspects of technology, things like text messaging, that were huge among the ages younger than me, that I regarded as either ridiculous or trivial or just not worth considering. And it hit me, that I was relating to those new technologies in the same way as my parents deal with their computer, and my grandpa dealt with his cars.

So, I determined to start tackling new things… here are a couple of them, that have helped me, that I thought I’d share…

Read more after the break...

Newsfeeds
The internet is, in many ways, like trying to drink from a firehose. Almost an ur firehose (in the sense of some ultimate, ideal firehose, some incomprehensibly powerful and ultimate firehose). I used to spend a lot of time hitting various websites. Since my interests range pretty far sometimes, that ate up a lot of time. And that time was not there then for other things (like updating the Synchronicity Arkive). I was, in other words, trying to drink from the firehose, and as such, getting pushed around an awful lot, and even still, pretty much having trouble getting a decent drink. I had read an awful lot about RSS (Real Simple Syndication). In case you didn’t know, RSS is a really a way to combine “push/pull” for internet content. It’s pushed, in the sense of, when a website gets updated, the RSS “feed” is updated. But it’s pulled in the sense that you have to add the feed, which is then checked on an intermittent basis. But what it works out to is, once you set up the feeds/sites you’re interested in, they then “auto-update” you when things change. You can pick up, basically right where you left off, when new content comes in. I think of this is a super-straw for drinking from that firehose. You pull the water from the firehose’s stream, and get enough to drink. That’s all well and good, as metaphors go, but RSS really does vastly change how you relate to the internet. I’ve used it to add blogs and other sites for authors I like, and now I’m up-to-date on what they’re publishing, even if they go sometimes months without updating. And I don’t have to worry about it (much – like anything else, it can break).

Text Messaging
I sort of already used text messaging as an example above, that that was one of those techs that I just didn’t get. And when that moment hit, I did kind of feel like a grumpy old man, yelling at kids to keep off his grass. But there are a lot of nifty things you can do with text messaging. Nowadays you can update blogs and other internet content. You can “ping” friends to see what they’re up to, even if you’re separated by some pretty vast differences (although, be forewarned… drunk texting is just as bad as drunk dialing). I even started using the multimedia version of texting, to send a photo or two. And ironically enough, discovered that two friends were on their way to a nearby area at that very same time. Makes meeting up a heck of a lot easier.

DVR
OK, this one isn’t really one I had to be forced to, but since it has had such a huge impact on how I relate to media, that I can’t resist including it. And it lets me poke fun at my fiancé. The easiest way to describe a DVR is that it’s like a digital VCR (at least, that’s the easiest way to describe it to those who grew up with VCRs). But in my mind, a true DVR is as much like a VCR as a car is like a horse and carriage. H&C will get you some place, just like a car, but man, the car is so fundamentally different, it’s like a whole new category. Today, many more people are familiar with DVRs, on account of the cable companies jumping on the bandwagon, but when I got mine, back in 2001, that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, my fiancé stated rather emphatically that we didn’t need such a thing, since we had 2 VCRs that we weren’t even using much. But she did up getting me a ReplayTV for my birthday that year, only slightly begrudging the idea. And man o man… it has changed how we relate to TV 5000%. The difference between the VCR method of scheduling times to record, and just selecting shows on the DVR is one aspect of that, certainly. It’s also the one most people think of, because that’s practically all the cable company’s DVRs can do.

The Replay though had a couple things about it that moved it way beyond the VCR category, like in my earlier horse-and-carriage/car example. One was that the Replay had a network connection, so could get its tv show listings via the internet. It also allowed “show sharing” with others who had Replays (although I don’t know anyone who does, I did find a handy “link up” service, that allows you to upload what you have and then offers to hook you up to people who have what you’d like to see… which comes in very handy when the cable decides to go out mid-show). And then there’s commercial skip.

What can I say about commercial skip? It always makes me see red when I hear the TV networks talk about the “unspoken deal” between the viewing public and the networks. That’s the one where they give you free TV and you agreed to watch the ads. I don’t know about most people, but I’ve been paying for TV for years. There is no free TV for me. So don’t give me that I ever agreed to watch ads. Especially as ads have gotten more and more intrusive. I certainly accept that ads have a role, and that they do subsidize the costs of the programming I’m enjoying. However, since there hasn’t really been much alternative to the ad-supported model, that’s really not doesn’t sway me around to the “unspoken deal” way of thinking. Commercial skip gives you a great big nuclear weapon to fight back against the networks on that. And man, it’s just crazy how much more rewarding the content is, and how much quicker it goes by without the commercials. It does take some adjusting (no “pre-configured” bathroom breaks, for example), but it’s really really really nice.

Phew… I really didn’t mean to rant about DVRs there. Again, my point there was more to point out a couple examples of how I’m trying to stretch my technology patterns. Which now leads me to the real point of this entry.

Music Music Music
I’ve now been reading a lot about some of the new “music discovery” options that exist online. Combine that with some of thinking I’ve been doing on my own, and with the discussion we’ve been having here lately about ways the Arkive could improve, and I came up with an idea to maybe try one of those. Since the synching community has had at least some influence on the music that people have picked up and tried out, I thought that might be an ideal “wider net” to use for such an experiment. As I said in my podcast interview, I miss music, and ever since the music industry successfully killed Napster, I’ve been struggling with (and missing) music.

Thoughts?

peace,