The Medium is the Message

This blog post is for the lecture on September 24^th, 2018.

I can understand much better now why Claude Shannon would venture into the electronic mouse game. By the way it was originally explained, it seemed as though he was just “piddling around” and playing with machines for fun. However, the relay system he created was a great way to demonstrate the power of relay memory and the usefulness for the future phone companies. Plus, as a cat owner, the play possibilities are literally endless.

This image is Claude Shannon with his electric mouse, Theseus. Source: Cybernetic Zoo

More interestingly, the thought that order, mathematical order anyway, leads to very little information in the end. What was explained in the book about Shannon, mentioned in an earlier blog, was that the mathematical order present in things, like language, causes the words to be worth less. It’s almost calling text lingo the superior language. For example, the word “you” versus “u.” The former takes longer to write and say, plus it takes longer to understand the meaning because if you’ve never seen any of the letters you have to piece together three instead of one. This means that the “y” and the “o” in the word you are really worthless as they aren’t needed to understand the word, so they aren’t needed at all.

This idea, theoretically, is a good thing for computer science because it allows for language and numbers to hold zero meaning. For example, Google is able to pull up webpages and process information in any language. Regardless of what country or language the program was made in. This is due to the letter grouping of the program and its ability to locate patterns and order in any language and spit back articles that matched the pattern. Overall, the study showed that the ability to find order and mathematically represent it, while making the information worth less, allows programs to better understand the information since it was simplified.

This blog post pertains to the lecture on September 19^th, 2018.

The first notes I would like to make are on the required reading “A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age” by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman. For starters, the introduction was puffing (slight exaggerations or white lies in order to make a person seem better or more qualified than they are) slightly in order to explain Shannon’s contributions to the binary code, but the way that the author did it had me convinced for about half of the book that Shannon was the one that invented binary. Most of the book had these slight attributions that wanted the reader to attribute these creations to Shannon instead of the founder, and that made understanding his actual contribution quite difficult. However, I understand that we couldn’t have the inventions without Shannon’s paper “Mathematical Theory of Communication,” which he actually did write. On the other hand, the descriptive writing about Shannon’s childhood and his time in Ann Arbor were very personable and written in a way that was amusing, so I can forgive the previous slight of confusion. Interestingly, and relative to my field, was how Shannon invented the code geneticists use to describe alleles and the population. Which surprised me because I wouldn’t expect a coding person to come up with symbols for a biological science, but I suppose with his cryptography background, symbols were kind of his thing.

To start on the lecture, the ideas created by people like Vannevar Bush and Lee DeForest seem to be the building blocks for the technological advancements we have now, and for that I thank them. While a majority of the systems’ inner workings is lost to me, I can understand all of the thought and work that went into figuring these things out. Especially since it’s difficult for me to conceptualize what they figured out, even though I have the blueprint of what they created. I can personally relate to the necessity of the Audion because, even though all phones already have it, my mother still insists on making sure people in Texas can hear her without the use of the phone. Maybe she got used to her parents speaking without amplification, or maybe phones just aren’t her specialty. Either way, I can see how a room full of people talking like that would increase the noise and therefore reduce the signal.

Last thought, the more I hear about Steve Jobs the more I believe that he just pasted together other people’s ideas in order to make some mixture that he could put his own name on.

I’ve been thinking a little bit more about why the younger generations like “stagnant” music. Now, I haven’t listened to a great deal of older music where the volume varies greatly, so if I am wrong please correct me.

I think it has to do, at least in part, with the new additions the new music can add with the use of technology. In the car the other day, every song on the radio had some sort of non-instrumental addition. Like clapping, or the dubstep sound I can only describe as the “wub-wub.” Some had other vocalizations, but they were repeated in a way that was not likely to have come straight from a person. Are they called soundboards? Those things with the preprogrammed sounds for each button, and that way you can hit multiple buttons in a certain pattern to create an electronic song. Thus, every time you hit the button the sound goes off or starts over, so I think the voice additions might have been from a soundboard.

Therefore, I think the lack of volume change comes from the addition of other sounds that if the volume were to be changed as well might be overwhelming. Versus for old music, the volume had to change in order to make the song more dynamic, where as the younger music doesn’t need any more dynamic additions.

Let us look at the two examples given in class: Fireworks by Katy Perry and (while I don’t remember the exact example used in class) let’s say the 1920s singer Cliff Carlisle. While Cliff has multiple different instruments and volume variation, he does not have any sound effects relatively close to the firework popping. Also, in Fireworks there’s a clapping sound, that seems to cut unnaturally to give it a sharper edge. Now, I believe that older music had the opportunity to do this as well, but I think newer music definitely uses it more: layering of sounds. Older music had a few instruments that played a melody and harmony with the vocals while the newer music layers what sounds like four or five different bands together.

The sound change in newer music isn’t nearly as dynamic, but the additional use of technological advancements and just over-the-top showmanship seems to replace the need for this change.

Ok, so I can officially say: I’m an established idealist. I think there is one ideal, and nobody reading this (including me) will ever be able to reach it or even fathom it. To be fair, I was an idealist long before I was religious so I can’t even attribute my ideas to religion. My modus operandi is to pick things that fit the closest to an ideal that it will ever be possible for me to reach, albeit in food, or family, or even relationships. I have no interest in fixing people or things, however. I think that’s the beauty of idealism, too, there is a perfection, but I don’t ever have to bother with reaching it (as long as I don’t kill anyone).

What about music? This one was a little tricky. Personally, I think the ideal of music is no autotune. A person’s natural and beautiful voice holds much more weight than anything man could create. Don’t worry, this applies to instruments too! Being blessed with the ability to play an instrument, sing, or even the blessing of knowledge, is something to be admired for what it is: a blessing. Even if you’re not religious, you have to admit that your gifts have to be attributed to something, and it could be your own hard work or your genes or even God.

So, back to how I pick “The Ideal,” it’s a construct. I decide what I think the ideal looks like, and then I get pretty darn close all the while knowing that I may have to fudge on certain things because the ideal is impossible. With family I may fudge the whole “always get along and hold hands,” because frankly my family is the definition of chaos. For spouses I may fudge the whole “love at first sight,” because I’m honest in that my personality grows on people. It just takes longer to grow on some than others, so if I’m close to the ideal I may wait way longer than I should for them to decide they like me.

In life I have a seemingly simple ideal: make something of yourself, find a love, have a few kids, then the rest I’ll kind of just make up as I go. Now of course, the ideal would be chasing it NOW. But the fudging here is I know I can’t have a spouse or kids now, so I work on other things until those are a little closer to ideal.

Last thought, popular things do not have to be the ideal. I know you’re all thinking:

But bear with me, just because everyone likes something doesn’t mean it’s the best. I haven’t specifically read the entire Bible, but I’m pretty sure there’s a whole town where the complete OPPOSITE of ideal was popular. That’s the town where God kind of decided, “Burn it, and start over.” And so, it was. Therefore, it’s possible to make completely not-ideal things the popular opinion but I highly doubt he’ll have to start over just because people like Justin Bieber exist. Because I know if I hear Apollo’s harp and its some Little Wayne and Justin Bieber mash up, I’m going to be pissed.

I can’t be sure what the ideal really is, but I can say definitively as the professor hit on: Baked Hot Cheetos are the closest to ideal humanity will ever get to. No argument. Even my cat is in awe of the mere presence of them.

First, allow me to explain the reason this blog was created (for those visitors that are not my history professor). This blog is a creative expression of my personal thoughts and comments on lecture material gone over in a digital history class that I attend during the week. Therefore, all thoughts expressed in this blog are opinions, and should not hold any intellectual weight on any person! Because, let us be honest, I am in no way a revolutionary.

The lecture on Monday September 10^th, 2018, went into vivid detail about the phrase “The Medium is the Message.” Hence the title of the blog, because frankly I was quite charmed by it. To explain it simply: the idea of the statement is that the way something is said or delivered, is the content of the message, or is at least more important. For example, if the message is kept the same but the delivery changes, the receivability of the message can be drastically altered. Take a proposal: if a man shaved “Will you marry me” into their back hair, most women would staunchly refuse. However, if a man planned this elaborate event that was specific to that woman, then she’d be much more likely to say yes. Either way, the phrase “Will you marry me” pops up, it just depends on the medium for its effectiveness.

I have a very solid idea that memories create static moments in time that claim to hold more importance than any other part of the memory. To me, this is easier to explain, because of course there are things and times that are way more important in someone’s life. If someone can play back a memory from beginning to end like a video recorder, I would be seriously freaked out. For example, I watch my niece during the summer to give her mom a break because she is quite the handful. Looking back at the most poignant memory I have: I know I was watching her as she walked around the room with her toys, but I just don’t recall exactly what she had or how long she was holding the toy before she switched it for something better. But boy do I remember when she grabbed the air conditioning grate and went ham on my sister’s television. That image will never leave me, yet everything before that was not important compared to the whole killed-flat-screen moment. Plus, this paragraph also helped reflect the last point, the emphasis you give describing or displaying a moment are more descriptive of my trauma than the act itself.

As it pertains to the cinematic experience, I think it shows the change in a generation’s thought process. The old movies showed the need for older generations to process things from start to end, and then from start to end of another perspective. However, younger generations want the information delivered in a chronological, all-inclusive, point of view. Take the way Judge Judy conducts her court and the way other newer judges conduct their court. Judge Judy goes from beginning to end with the plaintiff, and then beginning to end with the defendant, versus Judge Faith switches back and forth between the two to obtain a chronological view as certain events happened as opposed to the whole ordeal.

Overall, it’s entirely about how you say things. The words can say a million things, but a persons delivery and actions are worth so much more.