Wiardgroup

--- In wiardgroup@y..., "drmabuce" <drmabuce@y...> wrote:

...

>    Here's my $.02 to 'seed the batch'…
>    I'm an old guy. I've been patching since 1972. I'm fascinated by 
> the fact that it is now possible to communicate almost instantly 
with 
> folks who have similar gadgets and interests. The concept is 
dazzling. 
> In contrast, the reality of this fascination is composed of delight 
> and rueful morbidity in nearly equal parts. For instance, my 
> perception is that close contact among users has fostered the 
growth 
> of 'tribes'; cults of personality formed around design concepts of 
the 
> gadgets  from which the nature of the designers is extrapolated 
(with 
> a predictably-high degree of  inaccuracy, I think)
>     While anthropology/sociology 101 students will give this 
> observation the big yawn (wellll… duh!) I'm nonetheless interested 
> because in the 1970's I did not experience anything approaching the 
> level of 'tribalism' in the user bases. Sure, there were Moog 
> partisans and Arp fans (and about a dozen professors who had 
actually 
> seen a Buchla) but I didn't see the level of fractiousness that you 
> can read in an afternoon of browsing the analog lists today. People 
> weren't rallying around Dr. Bob or Al Pearlman or Don Buchla and we 
> definitely didn't see them addressing one another directly.
> Mind you I'm not complaining, or  waxing nostalgic. I kinda think 
that 
> THIS is the golden age of analog but I'm theorizing (with apologies 
to 
> Dr. MacLuhan) that the media (i.e. the internet groups) ARE the 
> message .
> Whadda you folks think?


I think it has to do with the internet subliminally supporting 
consumer mentalities; you can go online and choose from modular synth 
manufacturers very easily while at the same time you don't really get 
to know the makers in person (just like you don't get to know the 
products before the purchase in a way you would with the newest 
Yamaha keys), so you make up an image in your mind that's easy and 
comfortable to stick to.

The more you get to know things only on a virtual level (mp3 
downloads, jpeg images, smooth & shiny webpage navigation written 
communication without even getting to know the handwriting of your 
prospective business partner), the more you will "fill up" the 
missing aspects to get the image in your head balanced. You create a 
virtual personality. The "little computer people" syndrome.

To exaggerate this a little, it's like reading a music magazine and 
deciding which of the interviewed groups you want to be a fan of. 
Does that make sense, doctor?

My thoughts are totally without any rating of this development, it 
has good and bad sides, it's the flow of things and who knows, in a 
few years time the situation might change again completely.

One possibility coming to my mind is that things could get back 
to "hands on" contact if maybe in the 2010 decade we will have 
quantum mechanics operating home computers assembling our custom 
circuits on our office desktops (sort of an enhancement of the 
current state of privately available EEPROM development, so to say - 
but who the heck gave me that idea? Someone from this list, I'm 
sure!), scenes and trends might develop locally, with local 
ditinctions & styles, as opposed to globally uniform trends 
like "E.C. vs W.C. style modulars", simply because retail and 
spreading of the materials & concepts won't require the internet 
anymore. Then there will be Frankfurt synths and Tokio synths and 
Mexico synths like there is Detroit techno and Stuttgart Hip Hop and 
London Dub and whatnot.

This concept I'm describing just assumes that synthesis hardware will 
become a cultural standard (and that's what it looks like at the 
moment), as opposed to fading back to the underground like it did 
twenty years ago. With software synthesis it has already happened - 
look at the "Native Instruments" parties, laptop-only concerts and 
public filesharing databases for patches & instruments -, so it is 
possible, given only that someone's (whose?!!) fascinating idea of 
electronics assembly becoming a consumer article will be reality.

Thoughts & feelings?

Anyone interested in collaborating upon development of real time 
operated (DSP, non-sampling based, TTS and pattern recognition based) 
speech synthesis system based on Lucent Technologies, by the way?

SK