RECORDING ENGINEERS QUARTERLY PRESENTS

Finally! A new place to find Audio related stuff you didn't know about before.  From cool gadgets and free plugins, to things and places only an audio guy could love. Each week I'll go off on a subject that's come up numerous times during the week, and throw some links up here that will certainly be worth checking out for one reason or another. 

June 18, 2004:  Why Technology Sucks and the Music Industry is doomed

Strange title for one of my articles/links, eh? I'll bet you thought I was 'Mr. Technology' - and I was...until recently. Not that I'm advocating a return to the days of parchment and the abacus, but I have a very real set of complaints.

You see, the more available and accessible technology gets, the better things are supposed to get. Remember the Jetsons? We should all have flying cars that fold up into a briefcase when we get to work (though they still parked the car in the garage at night...why?) Technology should be working to improve our lives. So, what happened? Technology has made all forms of entertainment disposable, there's no time to absorb one piece of media before 27 more are slapping you upside the head. This has led to the current state of indistinguishable music stars, reality television, and films that star 'major talents' such as Rob Schneider and Halle Berry.

Admit it...you know what I'm talking about here. Unless of course, you're in the coveted 16-24 age bracket. I'm told this stuff is marketed towards you. I'm told that people your age don't have enough intelligence to handle any programming more challenging than Jackass. I'm seriously hoping this isn't true. A friend of mine interacts with high school aged students on a regular basis. He assures me this ISN'T true -- that kids still WANT challenging art, they WANT challenging music, they WANT to READ. So the problem is not with them -- the problem is with what's being made available to them.

When I was a crazy music fan in that age group, not only were there chain stores like Harmony House, Musicland, Wherehouse, Tower and all the other overpriced mall-esque stores, there were these things called independent record stores. Little holes in the wall where an old couple would have 10000 records jammed into the space for 5000 - where you could walk in, dig through piles of things you've never heard of and pick some up based on what appealed to you. Most of those are either gone completely or severely limited on both stock and clientele today. No, the masses are told that the only place to get their music is Best Buy -- and they're rapidly being proven correct.

Did you know that Clear Channel and Best Buy have formed a partnership?
One is the company that determines what records will be available for purchase. The other is the company that mandates what will be played on 90% of the radio stations and in 90% of the concert venues nationwide. When the two get together, they should be able to push banal nonsense like nickleback, creed, and their ilk to a whole new generation of people being conditioned from birth to accept crap and move on. Yikes.... The people in charge of, well, everything think that you're not smart enough to handle anything more intelligent than Friends, Survivor, and Britney Spears. Are you going to stand for that?

None of that is getting us any closer to our link, just a bit of necessary background.

Now, back to the subject of technology. What I really have a problem with (and the reason why these links have been few and far between lately)

-- I hate the internet --

...well, not really. What I really hate is the world wide web. What began as a virtual community full of like-minded, intelligent, resourceful users has turned into an unusable mess of popup ads, spyware, tracking bots, adware, virii, trojans,remailers, you name it. I haven't opened my web browser (other than to check out Strong Bad emails) in over 60 days. These annoyances never really bothered me at home, because as a long time user, I made all the rookie internet mistakes years ago. I know what not to click on. I know that if something comes in my inbox, I don't HAVE to click on it just because it looks like my boss, or my friend, or my mom has sent me an attachment. I have developed this mental filter that lets me know that no one from work is going to send me links to naked pics of Beyonce (if only because I hate Beyonce...hehe) I know that when email comes from "Joe" or "Bob" that I shouldn't open it -- even though I work for someone named Bob. It's spotting little things like that. I admit, it becomes habit when you go through 600+ emails daily like I have to.

I once posted an article for another site that spoke of all the dirty little tricks that the script kiddies will pull to get you to infect your system. At the bottom of that page was a link that said (and I quote)    "Click here if you're a Stupid Ass"
The link downloaded a small file called "dumbass.exe" (If you see where this is going, i'm not ranting about you...hehe) Of course, by the end of the week, I had over 75% of my visitors clicking the link AND running the program. If people are dumb enough to do that despite TWO warnings and a long assed article, they're surely dumb enough to fall for anything one of the more malicious virus spreaders could come up with.

The only thing I can hope to do is educate. Maybe this article will make the lightbulb come on. The most simple advice is: Don't click on attachments in email; Don't click on links to webpages with mile long URL's full of script; Don't click on the "Yes" box on ANYTHING that automatically pops up and asks to install itself because it will only screw you over, and finally (and the point of this entire thing) Click here to get Spybot, and Click here to get Ad-Aware and see if you can't prevent this nonsense from spreading any further. Do it for the internet community....

Until next week --

Frank G

Copyright 2004, Frank G - all rights reserved.  Reprinted with Permission.