Taylor talks about the ways that digital technology shapes the three areas that have historically been so affected by technology: music production, storage, and consumption. What I like about this is that he brings it home with his interest in everyday people and their use of everyday technologies.
Back in the early days of the World Wide Web, there were technologies available for transporting and transmitting audio, but most of the formats sounded horrible or had files that were to big so they took forever to download and then were hard to store due to size.
MP3’s changed everything, producing sound quality coming close to the level of CD but with smaller file sizes. Once downloaded, you could store your MP3 in a variety of ways, via hard disk, Zip disk, or on a CD. MP3’s totally changed the way we stored music, making life easier and simpler for everyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Trs-KNNIw
Music Consumption
Here Taylor talks about Simon Frith and his theory of technologies. Here is states that the technologies that catch on are the ones that lead to the decentralization of music making and listening, and make more flexible ways of listening. I totally agree with him here, its due to MP3s and their download capabilities that we’re allowed to create a more personalized music consumption experience. What do I mean by this? Instead of going to the store like I used to back in the day and being forced to buy a complete LP or CD in order to hear a song that I liked, now I can download my own songs one by one and create my own album based off of my tastes. Now of course back in the day music was better all around so people didn’t mind buying the whole Earth Wind and Fire CD or LP because all 16-20 tracks were hits.
Eclecticism in consumption of music today to me is in direct response to the masses protest against the substance-less/soul-less music of today. The masses simply stopped buying the packaged garbage just to get a few select gems hidden deep within the packaged garbage. Now we can browse at our own pace and create our own listening experience which creates a more enjoyable environment.
http://www.participations.org/Volume%209/Issue%202/16%20Avdeeff.pdf
Taylor then talks about David Harvey's notion of "flexible accumulation" which is meant to describe what he calls a disorganized capitalist mode of production today.
The question I have for the group is what does David Harvey mean by a disorganized capitalist mode of production today?
Taylor then speaks of Jean Baudrillard’s theory and I totally disagree with Jean Baudrillard’s view that patterns of consumption have become so flexible that consumers are overwhelmed. I think that it’s the just the fact the patterns of consumption now favor the consumers and some people just don’t like that because they cannot manipulate consumption for profit the way they used to.
What is the All Embracing Technique?
Is Technique autonomous?
Ellul says Man is not adapted to a world of steel; technique adapts him to it. It changes the arrangement of this blind world so that man can be a part of it without colliding with its rough edges.
As long as technique is represented solely by the machine, it is possible to speak of "man and the machine." What if technique wasn’t represented solely by the machine? What if technique was represented by music?
Ellul talks about when technique enters into every aspect of life, it ceases to be external and becomes mans very substance.
If technique was represented by music instead of machine how would that change your view of this thought process?
When music enters into every aspect of life is that a bad thing? Has that already happened?
At the time of Taylor's article in 2001, there was a shift to the MP3 age of music distribution. The ability to download, store, and access "CD quality" audio through the internet was monumental in today's music market. There is of course the debate over whether access to consume any music diminishes the importance, significance, or sustainability of certain genres. As Schoenberg stated, the more easily consumable music is, we may come to a point where all music is "consumed, worn out." Through time, this point has mostly proven invalid, as the influence of "technique" (to use terminology from Ellul) has arguably done the opposite. The easier access to production and distribution has fostered more creativity in general.
As for the issue of agency in music as it relates to the rise of "technique" and the age of ease in distribution, technology as an agent is a subject that works both ways. As Taylor summarizes, "music technology both acts on its users and is acted on by them." This summary seems to provide a broad but sufficient summary of technology and its evolutionary status in music.
In the context in which Ellul refers to it, technique is the means by which a machine is integrated into society. Further, technique encompasses the very motions of the machine, as well as the way in which we perceive it. Because machines are designed to be tireless- or at the very least, more tireless than your average human- it could be said that technique is the very thing that sustains the machine and maintains the hum of a society carried by these tireless machines.
While the word "technique" certainly can be applied to music, I feel that Ellul's definition of it is too closely tied to machines and industry. While Ellul's writing certainly evokes lively images, there is little to it that strikes me as organic or particularly organic. For this reason, I'm not sure I'd try and relate the two. Similarly, if music became representative of this "technique," I might be concerned— would it reflect the same industry and purposes of the machines and society that Ellul describes, losing the character that we as individuals associate with it? If that is indeed the case, consider me a little unsettled. Just a little.
I've found that the omnipresence of music has indeed numbed me to it, to a certain extent; while music makes up the body of what I do and much of what I think about, the act of listening often comes dangerously close to being something consumed entirely in the background. Further, music is often made to play a background role in social media and advertising. In this context, I'd say that those responsible for the media have almost reduced the music to a machine- or at the very least, some sort of device.
The concept of agency and entry of music into everyday life is an interesting concept. While Ellul doesn't specifically address music in his writing, his focus on technique can be applied to this idea of total integration into society. Essentially, he asserts that the focus on technique has placed machines in the center of our society, which consequently dehumanizes our daily lives and processes. Taylor takes this a step further, saying that "objects are no longer defined by their functions, by their relationships to people, but now are defined by their relationships to each other in the absence of the social that is assumed to have been effaced-and along with it, individual agency" (23). Basically, Taylor is saying that, as technology advances, this technology is defined by its interactions with other technologies, not by its interactions with humans. In this way, the technology, whether musical or otherwise, is acting upon the people.
One particular discussion that was of interest to me was Taylor's reference to people knowing the words to music in a subconscious way. In referring to a woman knowing the lyrics to pop hits and singing along, he said, "It is not as if she knows all the hits; rather, the hits know her, they catch up with her, killing her softly." This perspective is somewhat contrary to what we do in music therapy. For example, this semester I am working with older adults with dementia, many of whom have lost the ability to communicate fluently. Some cannot speak at all, while others provide only yes or no answers. Yet, when we play and sing a familiar song, they are able to mouth/sing along nearly all of the words. This is viewed as a great success, because it allows them to express something and feel like there is one aspect of their life where they can be successful, despite their declining state. However, Taylor presents this almost as if the music is forcing the person to sing along against their will. This was definitely an interesting perspective to consider, but I tend to disagree.
Taylor‘s article talks about the impact of technology in our culture and it can be related to Sterne`s reading by the subject of distribution and how the digitalization of art and MP3s affected the consumption of music. The author highlights the need of a ethnographic approach on the latter and he gives focus to the two classic theories of consumption, one from the top to the bottom, that brings us back to Adorno`s and Horkheimer’s readings, it would be the case when "the so-called culture industries promulgate their products on a public that accepts them unquestioningly". The other one would be the opposite, from the bottom to the top, as a type of popular culture, which individuals would make their own meanings out of mass-mediated cultural forms.
The author then argues that "Practices of marketing and consumption, from being either top-down or bottom-up, are instead more like Stuart Hall's memorable characterization of the dynamic between dominant and subordinate cultures, "the double movement of containment and resistance" that never ends". Which ideas of consumption of music prevails nowadays and what are some examples of it in our society?
Ellul collected and redefined the meaning of technique (or Technique) by which is far beyond the attachment of the machine. He stated the technique becomes autonomous and in today’s society and we, are inseparable of technique, from the primitive era to current age. The means of technique in producing the most efficient way to execute all activities in every areas of our life, and the given principal subdivisions of modern technique which are economic technique, the technique of organisation, and human technique are substantial and cover broad effects technique has impacted on.
I think when efficiency is the most sought-after goal, and when the rise of knowledge in how to make the best use of available resources have reached its capacity, it gives the technologies important role in transforming music’s consumption and production. The birth of MP3, in my opinion, is one of the examples of how technique, in form of an ongoing, extension of the previous productions helped transforming how we consume music, in a more efficient or “comfortable” way. The customers also have substantial freedom to choose what they want from various kinds of musical genre, and compile them within a portable storage with ease. Therefore, transforming the relations between consumers to music itself.