Music mapping? This remind me of the last articles about Pandora and connecting music by playing a song someone might like based on another band. Music-map.com was a great resource for music mapping. I decided to test it out. I typed in “blink-182” and waited for the results. Rise Against, The Offspring, Sum 41, Green Day. Yup, I love all those bands.

Next, I thought I’d try Shakira. Closest are Enrique Iglesias, Madonna, and Britney Spears. How interesting! Usually, if I’m listening to Shakira, I want more spanish music. Of course both Shakira and Enrique Iglesias are probably the most popular among english speakers. Typing in J Balvin, all of the musician that show up are spanish. Interesting to see where language and music collides

The other maps linked were very informative.  I thought it was fascinating to get a visual representation of music, music history, and see the connections between groups and artists. My favorite of the links was still music-map. I spent a good, solid 15 minutes tying in different artists I like and seeing what other artists pop up. I’m really thrilled to find this tool, I can use it to find new music!

Before these articles, I would have scoffed at the idea of there being music graders at Pandora. I have a bitter taste in my mouth when it comes to hearing the word “radio.” After the Telecommunications Act of 1996, radio started drastically change and became a formula. I detest listening to the radio even now. It’s always the same songs (and I like top 40 songs). I blame Arbitron and all the damn commercials.

In the article “Pandora’s ‘Music Genome Project’ explores the cold hard facts of how we interact with music” the author feels the same way I do about standard radio. “…its talent pool can look a little shallow. Not just the same artists but the same albums crop up repeatedly…” I know there are different channels, but my musical preferences can change in the time it takes one song to play. I’ve found myself listening to Shakira, then Tupac, The Offspring to Michael Jackson. That’s not going to fit in any sort of radio formula

I digress with all the insults. This human genome project is really interesting. I think it’s help break down music into the tiniest piece. Genres still have a lot of leeway for different sounds, but mapping music can really help someone hone in on what type of music they like is really interesting. I think this is an interesting concept, but I’m not sure what they will really be able to do with that data.

Even after reading on it, I have more respect for Pandora. It most likely won’t get me to listen to the program. It’s truly hard for me to appreciate the radio format when I have a software like Spotify where, with my paid subscription, I can no commercial and can scroll through and pick songs I like and make playlists. While I appreciate the adaptation, Radio is dying and that it only the fault of telecommunications companies.

MP3. Oh man. I was alive and coherent to see the rise of the MP3 format. I was quite excited to read this book. Although it was interesting when he started it off talking about Gnutella, a peer-to-peer network. The MP3 came alive with the world’s introduction to Napster. I remember downloading MP3s. “You mean, no CDs? Stored on my computer? And it’s free? Awesome.”

Eventually Limewire and frostwire were big. I used those more than I had used napster. Eventually I, like many others, switched to torrents. Most probably switched due to the virus and inability to know you were getting. Or know the quality. I was always upset to get a poor quality MP3. I still downloaded though. I once had over 4000 MP3s stored on my PC.

I’ve never really thought much about the actual files types of MP3s. I remember back in the day, there was 190kbs and 320kps. I always assumed it did involve how much data there was stores, but I never understood how much of a difference there could be in size from the original audio file. It’s fascinating to think that we are able to take an audio file and say, “oh this part is irrelevant to the listener, lets take it out.” It also makes you wonder if those parts were something that made music was it was originally: natural.

Side note: I remember my mom bought my brother an MP3 place one year, this was before the iPod. And the think was literally the size of a portable CD player. In a few years, MP3 plays were all the rage. Not only that, but Apple can attribute its true success to the MP3. Apple computers were not selling as much as PCs at the time, it was the invention of the iPod and the iTunes store that changed the company.

I appreciate how much love is going into the digital file of MP3 in this book. While it’s not the internet, as far and true revolutionary items, it’s still up there. Look at this digital age we have. Look at where music is. Look at how complex it can be (or if you’re a cynic, how much of a formula it now contains.)

One thing I really enjoyed about the book is the history it provides about hearing and sound combined with technology. We’ve covered quite a bit about this in class, but it’s still fascinating to have just understood hearing and recording on physical level. Then to digital and information levels. We can break down music not just into sound, but break it all the way down into binary, possibly.

For this week, I really found the information on passwords and security to be quite fascinating. I actually just lost my PlayStation account to a hacker and have to contact Sony (Which is harder than it sounds). I’ve also lost my Skype account to a hacker (Do you know how hard it is to contact them to get this fixed? I gave up.) I also lost my Origin’s account before. They tried to buy a video game, but my card info wasn’t saved. Thankfully, Origin’s was super easy and fast to deal with. What the hell, Microsoft.

I’ve only lost a few account, but it never has seemed to be a direct attacked here I was emailed and phished, because I wouldn’t lose multiple accounts at once, or have anyone actually charge my cards or anything of that sort.

In the article “Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger” by Dan Goodin, I was struck by the line, “The average Web user maintains 25 separate accounts but uses just 6.5 passwords to protect them” It got me thinking, how many accounts I had?

Let’s see.
Skype
4 different emails
4 Online forums accounts
Steam Account
Origin’s Account
Battle.net
Amazon
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Snapchat

That’s 16 accounts, and that took me about 15 seconds to come up with the list, so I know there are many more. Thankfully, I use more than 6 passwords, but I have ones a favor, and I tweak my passwords as well. But I’m not surprised to see such few passwords.

So many sites require specific requirements. Then, you have to remember them. Then you have to remember which site corresponds to what password. This is even harder when you can’t remember if the website has specific password requirements. No wonder people don’t have tons of passwords and it’s no wonder people store them in unencrypted files or on post it notes.

This digital age with such great technologic advances is making it harder to really completely protect yourself. Honestly, I’ve just given up to accept the fact it’ll happen, and just know to way to fix it.

Source: http://jtittleinnovations.com/blog/technology-serve-the-innovations/intellectual-property-is-an-important-legal-and-cultural-hipe/

On a week about copyright, it was funny to talk about land. Land is alienable. Why? Because land is property. It has ownership. It always made sense to me in the way that land does belong to the people, but it can’t always belong to everyone. After all, that’s what the public land, like national parks, is for.

When we talked about  intellectual property and corporations. Oh the land topic finally made sense. The idea of copyright being property: specifically intellectual property. How to protect your own property? Physically and with a contract. How do protect intellectual property that can be possible, easily accessed by the general public?  Patents.

A patent, “Prevent others from using it. You get completely ownership. You can to prove it is original and new and practical to get a patent.” How can a company hold ownership. If a company an owner? I felt silly when we discussed this in class, because I didn’t realize the full extent to which a company was considered a person. I can’t believe how naive I was, or possibly am.

When our discussion went into copyrights, that I had known a lot about, outside of the reading. I really enjoyed the wensite linked: https://unhappybirthday.com/.  It was an extremely simple website that went over what copyright and copyright infringement is.

I loved the discussion on how the copyright came to be, and the timeline of changes

• First copyright was termed  for 14 years, renewable if the author is alive
  • 1831, term changed to 28 years with 14 year renewal
  • 1909 term changed to 28 years with 28 year renewal
  • 1976 lifetime plus 50 years
  • 1998 lifetime plus 70 years

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse

I had no idea how crazy the changes had been, but I knew it was related to Walt Disney. I think with how media is currently, and the new social media, we need to take a look at copyright and public domain. While I know that Mickey Mouse is important to the Disney corporation and is a true icon, I think ti completely be unable to use it in certain situations is a disservice since it’s become such a known icon and is actually integrated into our culture and our past in the U.S.

For my music term scavenger hunt, I decided to look up ragtime music. First, I went to google ngram to take a look at around the time the term started being used.

I noted that using the term ragtime showed a sudden surge right around the turn of the century. When I started googling ragtime just to see in general what information I could find, I decided to search for the work “rag-time” as well since that term seemed to be more of the period.

For fun I decided to add creole in the list, since I think of Louisiana  and New Orleans with the term. I also added swing music because in an article I was reading, it said ragtime fell out of favor for swing music, which looks to be the case according to the chart.

I then added ragged music since that was also the term used, but it doesn’t seem to show up any earlier on here than ragtime. Even trying to look up that word proved difficult, so I just stuck with rag-time.

After quickly checking out google books and not finding much, I went to the Library of Congress. After searching ragtime and rag-time, the earliest known instance I could find was the Kansas City Daily Journal on December 21st 1896. I included the article below.

It came from an entertainment section on Music and Drama. The article uses the term, “The illustration of ‘rag-time music’ by Ben R. Harney claims to reveal the principles  of native American music, as expressed through the negro.” I thought that was an interesting way to described ragtime music. When the encyclopedia of Britannica says,

“Ragtime, propulsively syncopated musical style, one forerunner of jazz and the predominant style of American popular music from about 1899 to 1917. Ragtime evolved in the playing of honky-tonk pianists along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in the last decades of the 19th century. It was influenced by minstrel-show songs, blacks’ banjo styles, and syncopated (off-beat) dance rhythms of the cakewalk, and also elements of European music.”

I guess that’s just an example of the product of the times.

I also found what seems to be the earliest use of the term in a advertisement for a show. In the paper The Sun on August 29th, 1897. They had Ben Harney advertised as a ragtime pianist. I thought that was pretty interesting.

I then looked up ragtime music as a general term online to get more info, I found that it was popular during the mid to late 1890’s. Yet, I was only finding stuff in late 1986 which is almost the late 1890’s. That seemed odd. I decided to look up artists to see if maybe I could  find instances of them  earlier than that. Google search lead to to figure out that Ben Harney was actually the earliest I could seem to find, at least, who was famous. (Although Scott Joplin did apparently play at the World’s Fair in 1893 but I can’t find a piece of physical proof from the time of his playing and what the music was considered.) This lead me to believe that the circle of people who listened to Ragtime music when it was getting popular were probably poorer folk. That seems to be the most likely explanation as to why there is no earlier instance of the word use I could find.

When I went searching further, the Kalamazoo Library website said that the first ragtime songs were cakewalk music and “coon songs,” and obviously terrible term. So, ragtime music probably went by other terms for a bit more 1896.

The Civil War was a time of shame for America. Or possibly, maybe this election is up there near that. Fighting amongst ourselves like children. Charming. Obviously, though, slavery is significantly worse than a sexist, racist man, and a woman who has done some questionable things with emails and other things.

“No evidence that thousands of blacks fought for the confederacy.” Part of me wouldn’t be surprised if they were signed up against their will, but so much livelihood depended on slavery, that why would they pull them? Then again, I’m unsure of the cost-benefit analysis of that. Also, maybe some of them signed up,  to be taken to areas controlled by the north and to escape. Then what about their family?

[After writing, I just remembered I have a letter that my dad found at this house that showed how much the cost of a slave was, $450 in 1812. Who would want to lose that much money?!]

We also mentioned in class arming them. If there was a disgruntled slaved, could he not take a gun and kill his own troops? If a slave felt like he was going to die anyone, wouldn’t he want to go out with dignity and taking someone with him? That sounds pretty romanticized now that I think about it. I’ll probably just blame media and it’s depiction of situations like that for that thought.

Louisiana Native Guard- Mixed group of creoles. Believed to be a group that fought for the south. Uncropped photo showed they were actually a part of the North. Ha. But, this made me curious about finding out what the internet says about this fact. First stop: Google.

I typed in “african americans in the confederate army” and the first website that popped up was The Root. This website article claimed that, yes, thousands of blacks did right for the confederate army. I tried to look for direct sources in the article, but all I could find was a bit about the author at the end.

“John Stauffer is a professor of English and African and African-American studies, and former chair of American studies, at Harvard University. He is the prize-winning author or editor of 14 books, including The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race; Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln; and The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On (with Benjamin Soskis).”

Oh, that’s a pretty good resume which would mean he had some qualifications in the subject. I found another article by him here: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/09/black-confederates/.

This one painted a clearer picture of there being “thousands” but that was less than 1% of the army. So, it’s really not as sensationalized as we believe.

HistoryNet claims there were also black confederate soldiers, but mainly as a labor force. So many there were a few legit black soldiers, but it seems like most were labor. Not a surprise, given the rights, or I should say lack thereof, they had in the south.

The Swing Beat! I am not a a  big smooth Jazz person  but I’m down  with the swing beat and Big Band Jazz. I actually took a class on the History of Jazz. And we got to look into the different types and the history of each and the break down of the music and the chord and the beats. I really enjoyed it. Granted, I’ve played music so I’m familiar with many things.

Sometimes I get so caught up in list listening to music for fun that I miss all the details put into it. I didn’t realize how many current song have swing beats in them until we discussed it in class. I really enjoy more modern pop/hip-hip music with the swing beat. It gives it a  really nice sound. To be fair though, I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately with that beat. It’s become a favorite beat of mine!  I digress…

I knew a bit about what we discussed in class, since I took that history of Jazz class. Though, in that class, I feel like we didn’t discuss race relations that well. I mean, in regards to race records. We discussed influences and what not, but I don’t believe my teacher ever specified the actually record label and the like. So I was fascinated that there were labels that only wanted black people, but also included white people in the background, but as a secret. I feel like that’s what they’ve done in the past but vice versa.

I remember us talking about Bessie Smith, but we focused more on Ella Fitzgerald in my other class, which seems odd since Bessie Smith was the first really big singer. I wonder who is technically more popular though.

Now, I briefly remember Muddy Waters, but I don’t remember discussing about his life. And the whole idea with the folklorists and going back to the roots was interesting. You can see how music music was packaged and sold even back “in the good old days” as many people like to say.

Time to talk about communication! Awesome. I use to study mass communications and use to host a radio show. That was super fun. It was also intriguing to learn about change in communication. In those classes we didn’t get into the railroad and time an importance in communication, but it make sense after talking about it now.

It never occurred me to how time zones were formed. Be railroads, timing only really directly affected the town or nearby towns, now, with railroads, communication had to change and time zones were born! And now, while things have been tweaked, they’ve been the same for a while. It’s particularly odd to know I exist right now while someone else exists in the exact same moment in a different time due to the time zones. Time and space really has changed, and electricity clearly changed it more. We’re no longer bound by the sun. Thank goodness. I do prefer the night!

Jumping over to our conversation on recording, oh man, I loved it! I mean, I didn’t realize that people would place instruments in different parts to get the correct sound the wanted before amplification! I feel a bit stupid to not have had that thought occur to me, but, I truly never though about it even though I did take a class on Jazz music and that’s the music popular at the time of these early recordings!

At the American History Museum, I was able to listen to early recording of voices and music like we did in class. I wish more people would know about that little exhibit. It’s remarkable to hear the difference in quality through the years and through the different types of recording. Plus, this type of recording is way easier to understand. The ribbon recording … ugh. No thanks.

Thank You Alan Turing for helping shorten WW2, and probably also being the reason for Blade Runner replicant test. Can Machine Think? Yes. I think so. Are they smart? Yes, I believe so. Are they alive? No. Can they feel? No.

It’s been weird to think about this class discussion. Because it was so hard to pinpoint the line of intelligence between humans and machines. What is the difference between learning and memorization? I know machines memorize, but they also observe patterns. Is that not how people work when they think? We, to understand something, have to see the patterns within what is being taught to us?

The only difference I can think of between us is the answer “why we do the things we do” and the emotions that drive us humans as a species. A Machine can agree someone should feel sad when another person dies, but not why we should feel that way or why we do.

That brings me to Blade Runner. In the film, if you talk to a Replicant, a robot, you would not be able to tell it was not human until it takes the Voight-Kampff test. A test to prove that a replicant is not human, mainly using the ideas of emotions. It should only take about 6 or 7 questions to determine if one is a replicant, at least in the book. Super cool, in my opinion.

Now, ENIAC and ARPANET are some of the coolest things I’ve learned about technology wise. I had heard of ENIAC in passing before, but I never learned the specifics. I also had no idea it was run by vacuum tubes, which, by the way, are still confusing to me. As are punch cards.

I never had to deal with punch cards, but I remember it being used in a quest in World Of Warcraft. So, I knew it was technologically related, but not exactly how it worked. Though it sorts of remind me of the music boxes that have a metal plates with dents in them. I know it doesn’t work that way, but, it’s just what I think of.

Arpanet is also cool to think about. I bet my father might have been able to use Arpanet during his time in the coast guard and government back in the day. I’m going to ask him and put it into this entry after. If so, I’m going to ask him to tell me about it. I know if he didn’t use it, someone he knows probably did!

I’m still struggling on Arpanet not being considered an intranet since it is closed. Why can’t it just be a special type of intranet. “An intranet is a private network accessible only to an organization’s staff. Generally a wide range of information and services from the organization’s internal IT systems are available that would not be available to the public from the Internet.” while Apranet “The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was an early packet switching network and the first network to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet.” Is it because arpanet was packet switching?