Kraftwerk – The Man-Machine

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I was born before the internet. Well, sort of, at least. In the 28+ years I’ve been alive, the single greatest cultural progression has occurred as the result of an exponential growth in technology. My goodness, we may not have flying cars yet, but we do carry around little boxes in our pockets that enable instant communication with both personal contacts as well as a potentially large, and widening audiences. Some of this stuff is getting freakishly advanced.

Yet, in one major arena, technology has not only failed to improve things, but has led to major steps backwards. Today’s Bangalore Mirror “reports” that since the advent of the mp3 and iTunes, ease of listening, ease of sharing, and ease of access have all replaced high quality sound recordings. This has been a growing trend among folks who really care not merely about what music they’re listening to, but how it sounds. NPR also did a piece on this a few months back with basically the same story. If anything, the past two decades have seen the quality-level of sound recordings simply drop. And not too many folks are complaining.

Now don’t get me wrong. I own an iPod and love it’s ease of transportation and ability to use BOOLEAN arguments to create insanely tweaked Smart Playlists. Yet, through a decent pair of speakers, I just don’t get the dynamic range that I would were the music heard through a CD, or better yet, a live performance. The worst thing is that music is too often relegated to simply background noise, or something that’s going while we multitask with doing work, cooking dinner, hanging with friends, or even writing a blog post (guilty as charged). Music is better than that!