I finished reading “You Are Not A Gadget” by Jaron Lanier. I don’t know to whom I would recommend the book, but I’m sure people should read it. He’s critical of technology in all the right ways and while I don’t agree with everything in the book (a manifesto) there was plenty that made me think. There were two big sticking points for me that got the wheels turning. He mentions that if he went back in time and told people that in the promised land of the future the best that our open culture would create would be a UNIX derivative (Linux) and a new encyclopedia (wikipedia). That stopped me dead in my tracks. He’s right. We’ve come up with a lot of “new” ways to do the same old thing. A bit depressing, that.
The other thing he mentioned was that the ’90s really lacked a musical style. I tried really hard to find some music from my college years that stood out and had a feel that couldn’t have happened in any other time and I was stumped. Maybe the ’90s and much of the ’00s were some sort of vacuum for music. A rehashing that has led us to a culture of mash-ups and re-contextualization that have been a kind of creative doldrums. It’s also possible that this assessment is missing a greater narrative that we’ll only see a decade or so from now. It does leave me wondering what’s being done now that is going to lead to the next leap. After all, in years, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix weren’t that far apart but stylistically they are different planets. Where is that now? Somewhere.
This has definitely colored the way I’m treating the work I’m doing now. I’m ignoring certain notions that I once had and am taking a more extreme approach to my next offering. I had imagined doing something simple and acoustic but I’m second guessing that now. There’s an urge to chase an older stream of work I did and combine it with my recent sketches to see what comes out. In the end it’s alchemy that will lead to the next quantum leap.
There’s so much to think about while doing the work. And that’s the key: The Work. It can’t stop. But it can change.
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