The Rigidity of Digital
Before MIDI, a musical note was a bottomless idea that transcended absolute definition. It was a way for a musician to think, or a way to teach and document music. It was a mental tool distinguishable from the music itself. Different people could make transcriptions of the same musical recording, for instance, and come up with slightly different scores.
After MIDI, a musical note was no longer just an idea, but a rigid, mandatory structure you couldn’t avoid in the aspects of life that had gone digital. The process of lock-in is like a wave gradually washing over the rulebook of life, culling the ambiguities of flexible thoughts as more and more thought structures are solidified into effectively permanent reality.
Notes:
MIDI as an example of how a digital version of a musical note boxed in the concept and removed us from the analog freedom of musical notes.
Folksonomies: music digital analog
Taxonomies:
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/art and entertainment/music/music reference/sheet music (0.256018)
/health and fitness/disorders/mental disorder (0.239142)
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Concepts:
Thought (0.987060): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Sound (0.981592): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Mind (0.946016): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Note (0.932671): dbpedia | freebase
Musical notation (0.885675): dbpedia | freebase
Idea (0.824484): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Frequency (0.778675): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Cognition (0.739622): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
You Are Not A Gadget