This week I felt was a mess of several different lessons discussed interchangeably and it kind of left me really confused. We had to read How Music Got Free by Witt, which I will discuss my opinions on later in this blog.

So this week we started off by talking about radio and how by 1939 it became booming where nearly every single region had several radio stations which were dominated by a few large networks like NBC. But then with this boom in radio there was eventual problems with frequencies and the proximity of the stations to one another because if two stations were close to each other and they used the same frequency they would conflict, it was later settled through the federal communications commission who regulated radio. Okay now Witts book, I generally liked it, I enjoyed the fact that it was told as a story and I enjoyed the drama involved in it all about the formatting war and the CD leakage and etc I just feel like maybe the book would have fit better into the lesson plan earlier on in the semester. Overall it was a good book regardless.

Furthermore, broadcast channels were scarce at the time, so basically the FCC had a money licensing fee and had to decided if it was public benefit to allow the rights in that specific region. I laughed when we started talking about the restriction of content and censorship of shows by FCC, how basically everyone watched the same exact things as one another and there was no vulgarity and everything was fake basically, like a married couple sleeping in two separate beds.. REALLY?

But now we struggle with the idea of not having any censorship really on TV and within media because now with no censorship, the crazies come out. People spreading conspiracy theories has no limit because we cannot censor their free speech but then danger and trouble come out of it because of that, like the DC pizza parlor, and the pain the families of sandy hook and 9/11 feel because they are constantly told that the trauma that happened to them and their families was not real and all falsified and there is huge groups of people that genuinely believe it and it really breaks my heart.

Today was kind of a boring class if I am being completely honest. We began the class talking about the enclypedia, seemingly everyone had one in the class had them at one point in their lives except me I really did not even know what they were until a teacher talked about them in like middle school. I like the idea that its important to know that things only get better as people use them, that the easier access we have to information the better it gets over time.

We also ventured into talking about the four freedoms, I could describe them right now within this blog but I do not think thats necessary at this time. Next point of discussion was copy right which I also touched on in my previous blog, today we used the example that the only reason we know about socrates is because of plato being that the right of copy right did not exist. While we are talking about copy right and different types of disseminating information I would just like to say I love wikipedia and if it ever goes away I may cry.

Moving into the idea of crowd sourcing and wikipedia, I died laughing when we looked at the attack on the Paul Revere page and how it changed 1000+ times by trolls. I do think the idea of crowdsourcing is true because if you ask 500 people to write about something, you may have a few incorrect answers skewed by bias or misinformation but then you will also have hundreds of correct versions of said information which in the end is more helpful then not.

One last note, briefly before class ended we discussed this idea of how tech innovations radically altered peoples senses of space and time, like the fact that the dead can speak and the sound of space is known and can be heard by us today, here. OKAY, gross the Bell experiment with the ear freaked me out and I did not think people would ever actually think of that as an idea to help create the idea of sound and all of that. I thought discussing the process of how they better managed sound through the creation of music halls, and recording studios, with the curtains, rugs, and sheets involved.

Today we began the class with this question, how do you acquire property without taking it by force?

Our class answer comes from john locke, who says, “a deer cant own property because it cant valor, they just live there, they did not mix their labor”. So they had no claim to ownership. BUT we began to argue in class that the mindset presented by Locke does not work in every situation that it is wrong because Indians that we kicked off the land they had settled on, did in fact labor. We then broke into what about ideas are they an example of mixing ones labor with the earth? The United States early on developed a notion of intellectual property and dominant forms of intellectual property. The idea of patents, trademarks, copyright- if its not a part of any of those a work would be in the public domain, which means it belongs to everyone and no one.

I laughed reading those articles about whether or not happy birthday is a copy right infringement because like honestly who cares, but I get it, that people do actually care about those things. But I just struggle with the idea of copy right because if the person is not trying to make money off of your idea, why do you care? I see people all the time create really great videos on YouTube with songs in the background and the videos get taken down because of copy right infringement which personally I think is a silly concept.

Next we spent time speaking about corporations in class, which basically is a fictitious legal person of an entity created by law and endowed with the rights of natural persons..what even is that definition it does not make any sense. The idea of corporations is so foreign to me, like how can a corporation, own land, pay wages, testify in court. Professor used an interesting phrase to break down corporation today which helped further my understanding, he called a corporation a “disembodied immortal being” which an example is disney.

The following class we broke down the idea of sampling and starting pulling out songs out of the news that actually came from other songs of the past, I do not know why, but it makes me kind of mad that all songs just come from samples. Not because they borrowed the music from someone else but like where is the originality, you as a performer, want people pay for your shows, buy your albums, and support you as an artist when you cannot even have the decency to create your own music?

Today for class we had to read Millers “Segregating Sound” and I loved it!! I love the way Miller writes and I love the way he tells the information, when he describes the railroad tracks and the people, and the songs I can legitimately picture it in my head. It is the first book I have really taken to in the class. An idea that Miller discusses is that genre marketing drives people apart, which is so true, and you notice it a lot more now then ever. I always hear people talk about different artists and how they cannot participate in a certain genre because they are caucasian or because they are african american. We see society limiting music and putting labels on things , for what purpose? Instead of using music to unite people of different races in different genres of music, we allow these marketing moguls to infringe on that and exploit the drama in order to make money. I think thats my favorite part about Millers book is that he calls that out, I do not remember the quote directly but he said once in it, like can we not appreciate music alone do we have to tie race and culture to it, is it possible for music to be enjoyed because it can be? The world today is separated and music could be the one commonality but its not.

We later discussed the idea of the white migration in the 20th century where millions people ended up leaving the south to go live in the north and find employment, I found it super cool to find out that DC had a huge influx of “hillbillies” who came to DC to work in the military industrial complex, I also find it funny they called them hillbillies though they probably lived less then a few hours from DC. I also found out that there was a type of music called “redneck jazz” like what even is that.. and I had no idea go go was created by african americans.

Something that made me sad to learn about was when we started talking about how country music was made because people missed their past life, but then we started talking about Jimmie Rogers and how he had a very talented Louis Armstrong on his music and could not even mention his name or give him the credit he deserved because he was black. It then makes me think about Millers book once again because in a time like that, these people who were not being treated correctly should have been able to receive credit for their work but then we are tying their culture to the music and race to the music, and UGH I do not know what to think about this. ALSO, not even going to get into it but Fillipino baby, – HUGE NO. I hated everything about it and found it so offensive.

Later in the week we touched back upon Miller in the idea of Henry Thomas and whether he was country or folk, and how basically Thomas made a living touring on the railroad cars performing and moving throughout the different areas of the midwestern US. Then we branched into a conversation about do-ti and 1-7, and how blues essentially start on 1 and go back to 4 and then back to 1 and so forth. Unfortunately I do not hear this at least on my own I would not be able to identify it on my own. We then talked about how people believe that folk music came from poor, backwood, ignorant people but that is mean and definitely incorrect it actually came from the idea of pure strains of music, which I had never thought of before so I now have a little appreciation for the basis of folk music.

Furthermore we jumped into american nationalism and federal nationalism and to be honest i had a hard time grasping all of the ideas that the professor threw at us this day. We basically discussed that theoretically all citizens are equal because they follow the same framework provided for us by nationalism. The idea of romanticism was the response to common rationality and tended to argue that meaning and beauty were found actually found in the irrational, and that those things were the ones that bound people beyond the rational will.

Today we spoke about the history of distribution and the history of genre, there were no readings for this week so it was interesting to come into class and learn about these things directly from our professor, he honestly baffles me with how much he knows about every single topic.

Unfortunately this lecture bored me, starting off the class talking about beats and rhythms of songs and the idea of tempo and what not, was boring to me I felt like I was in my high school composition class all over again. We all had a laugh when the professor told us that all white people suck at clapping and never clap on the correct beat, I mean he’s not wrong. We then transitioned into talking about the different versions of songs and how essentially a song can switch genres when they change the rhythm. For example a song played on the mississippi plantation versus the same song played by a country band, can be changed into a different genre in an instant because of those slight changes made to the dynamic of the song. Then we got into the conversation of Muddy Waters and how when he was living on the Stovall planation he was discovered and recorded singing and how he eventually became one of the leaders in the “chicago blues” area.

This week there were no readings so I was not sure what to expect coming into class because all I knew was that we were going to be introduced to american music which I was not sure what that was going to entail and boy did I get an interesting surprise haha.

This week we talked about the minstrel show, and wow did this class make me very uncomfortable not because of what we learned about necessarily but the reactions of some of the students in the class. Of course sometimes in the class the way the professor talks makes me uncomfortable but I think honestly thats the point of this class. I mean the professor said in the beginning of the class – most of the time he would always play the devils advocate, which is what makes the class interesting because if everyone just agreed with everything being said then whats the point? you’re not going to learn anything. So despite this topic or this class making me uncomfortable sometimes I feel like its good, it pushes you past your comfort zone or pushes you out of your own head. I appreciate the moderate discomfort from this professor.

On Wednesday we kind of went further into this topic, we talked about minstrel shows once again but then we also discussed the steel guitar craze that involved the hawaiians. I really enjoyed listening to that specific music in class today it was super cool and really different I ended up showing my roommates when I got home.

This week we had to read Soni’s “A mind at play” and I hate to be this person but I did not really like this book either, I thought it was extremely informative, I think that Soni and Goodman do this information justice in the way it is written but all of the technological talk mixed in with the information about this informational age I can see where they would get the recognition for this book since it was so well written and organized it really is so informative but I just feel like if you do not have an affinity towards technology you will spend most of your time reading this book just going “ok but why”, as I did.

So basically this week we talked about the idea of information, we spoke how information was conveyed – basically talking about breaking down something to just simply information. As a class we looked into garageband using gospel music or things from different cultures. Is it offensive? Is it not? Is it inappropriate that I, as a caucasian woman, can just take a beautiful gospel segment from garage band and put it in my own song with no credit to the person who’s voice that is or does no one actually care since they recorded that segment and placed it on a website like that to be used.

Next we talked about a lot of stuff that kind of went over my head just because it was lots of technological terms and I just sat there like hmmmm. But basically we talked about HTTP which means hyper text transfer protocol which I had no idea about until this very moment. We learned about Berners Lee who created a web browser break through in 1993 which was the first graphical web browser!! I was not even born yet, that is so weird honestly I cannot remember the first time I used a computer but I do not think ever thought about or even knew when the browser came out let alone a computer. So i guess i can thank this class for bringing these thoughts and different things to my attention. A cool fact that stuck out the most to me was that in June 1993 there was only 130 sites but literally two years later there was almost 25,000?? Thats actually insane. I wonder what it is now.

As per the videos that we watched on how the internet worked I think they were helpful to me at least because sometimes depending on the topic I am a visual learner so watching videos of the explanations on how the internet works and everything that comes with it was helpful to me after class to tie in everything we spoke about that day about sites and HTTP and etc.

Sadly I missed Mondays class because I was sick but today I was able to make it thankfully!

The reading for today, “As we may think” bored me when I had read it prior to class, I kind of struggled my way through the piece but when I finally made it through I do understand the point of the reading as whole. The way this piece was written was particularly intriguing because it introduced ideas well known to us, like how different portions of science have evolved in the past like with photography the author speaks about how that form of science essentially will never not be changing and adapting which is so cool to think about because years ago people probably would not even believe the type of cameras we have now. The rest of the article kind of just went over my head unfortunately.

But,I thought todays class was particularly interesting because of the time era we spoke on. In the beginning of class we spoke about WWII which I’ve always had a curiosity about weirdly enough. I’ve always loved hearing stories about it so for Professor O’Malley to be so well versed in that portion was very intriguing for me.

Next we spoke about telephones and things regarding the sound and the issues that they faced trying to get the sound to amplify but not sound distorted. I don’t know if its just my straight ignorance on this topic or what but honestly I generally never had thought about the things people had to create and change in order to simply hear someone.

Really don’t have any critiques for this week since it was so straight forward this week, I just wish sometimes I had just a little bit more knowledge of each topic enough so I felt confident enough to partake in the conversation. Maybe over time, who knows.

Okay, this week.. interesting. I feel like I’m forever going to use that term to describe the class and all we learn.

The book, The Shallows, I didn’t take much too. I felt as if Carr was actually just talking at me rather then getting me interested. I mean obviously people felt differently considering the award on the front of the novel but I don’t know it just was not my cup of tea. I understand where the author is coming from but being from my generation – all we hear is how terrible we are, now I have read it also. I do not agree with his ideas either really, he says once that multiple platforms take away from the learning experience but for me at least that is not the case, I think the fact that these different platforms are available in order for us to use all of them to the best of our ability which is important for learning in my life and I am very thankful that I have those capabilities. So overall I disagree with Carr, I think the internet and digital media is beneficial in the right use.

But something I couldn’t keep my eyes off of was the power point type thing, the “annihilation of time” the photos, the information, I was so intrigued on every single slide, it was literally so cool!

Idealism vs realism, was a tough concept. I have always been super realistic about things despite my religion. I don’t trust blindly within my faith I always think of the other side of it, which is weird for this topic considering idk what side I fit on throughout this conversation. I know the professor can’t tell us what we are but I wanted to know by the end of the conversation what I identified with. It was super cool to hear everyone speak on their beliefs in a setting where no one argued back, minus the professor.

Overall, I think I’m getting more and more comfortable in the class, almost to a point where I may share in a future class. I like the professor but the only critique I have is I feel like anything I share he’s going to shoot down, not sure just makes me stressed to speak.

We didn’t have class this week!! Which was super nice honestly..

About to start this book!

Thanks Professor O’Malley.