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WHEN people try to destroy my argument about a crisis in culture, one of their most common tacks is to suggest that I’m describing just the fading of an old world — classical music, literary writing, print journalism and so on — that is being eclipsed as a new, more democratic pop-culture-driven world rises, bestowing its blessings on all of us.
But what I talk about, here and in my book Culture Crash, is an economic/ technological/ sociological cock-up that does not discriminate by genre lines or by high/ low delineations. The latest evidence of this is an online rant of a club deejay. Here’s a bit from “The Dead Art of DJing” which shows the coming of the winner-take-all economy that’s reshaped other fields:
There used to be this great middle ground, between basic bar nights and big festivals, where DJs with a unique sound, or style, could earn a modest living touring around and performing at club nights that catered to specific underground music scenes. The crowd was made up of people who loved music and dancing and wanted a night out in a dark room where they could just sweat and get lost in the vibe. This middle ground was where most artistically minded DJs made their living, and it was where I had always wanted to be, but while there are exceptions here and there, it has, for the most part, disintegrated.
Further down in the piece is a description of the kind of technological unemployment I describe:
Do you realize that, right now, at this very moment, technology could completely replace the human DJ? Somebody could create a program that tracks the itunes and Beatport charts, then searches the artist and song titles in Soundcloud, downloads 128bpm remixes, analyzes the wave form for appropriate mixing points, and then blends the tracks together live, for the enjoyment of the dancefloor. I’m not talking about the future. This could be done NOW.
As time goes on, we’ll see more and more people who think they’re immune from this kind of thing see that these same forces I describe are coming for them, too.
I just finished reading your book. Well written, and a lot to think about.
Musicians complained when they were replaced by DJs playing “canned” music. Not too many tears down at the musicians’ local about DJs being replaced with robots playing CDs of singers chanting robotically rhythmic lyrics over robotic, boom-box drum beats.
Robots help create the rust belt. Entire cities destroyed like Detroit, Flint, Gary, and Youngstown. Not much said about it relative to the massive destruction. They were just working class people. Now that the middle class is losing jobs it seems to be a different story….
To my mind, this robotic concept of society is a much deeper problem than current economic trends. Our culture’s concept that humans can be transformed to cyborgs is a manifestation of a 2000-year tradition of viewing the universe as mechanical. This profoundly influenced our understanding of what humans are and deeply informs our cultural expression. Hence the vision of society itself as a massive wired-together cyborg that is programmed by the media. We might call it Cyberbia. The robotic nature of Pythagoras’ harmony of the spheres and his vision of celestial mechanics even profoundly influences our musical understanding. Canned, robotic music “played” by robots is thus a natural, perhaps even inevitable, development of the Western mind.
Artists become “immortal” when their work aligns with and reflects the larger forces of history. If our culture (or collective Mind) had taken a radical turn away from a technological definition of the human and universe, the music of Bach would have remained forgotten. Instead, the goddess Techne’s rule became even stronger, much to the benefit of Bach’s mechanistic understanding of the world. Since Bach’s musical vision was aligned with Techne’s overwhelming force, he became destined for greatness, a part of a much larger force of cultural history that created a mechanistic understanding of human identity and nature.
The Rustbelt, unemployed DJs, and empty newsrooms in the wired world of Cyberbia are just the latest, and by no means the last, manifestation of Techne’s rule of the Western mind and its steady march toward a post-human civilization. Classical music and DJs? One gnat pretending he’s bigger than the other gnat, both clueless about the forces destroying their world…
Sorry, I know I should shut up, and I soon will. Trouble is, no one around here is saying much worth commenting on. One more book in the cue before I get to yours.
You may lament the influence of Techne, but from what I read in the papers, she’s on her way out. The great anti-Techne that is Islam is at this very moment reproducing (using nature’s way) at a furious rate and is on the way to out-birthing and out-maneuvering most Western societies. (See any current newspaper account of birthrates and demographic changes.) When the anti-modern ayatollahs (closely attuned to the natural world) are ruling from London and Berlin and Paris, you may miss Techne’s indifferent coldness and freedoms.
I’m not for or against Techne’s rule, but think about what it means and how it might be best managed. The human and the human interface are becoming the same thing. An new being is created: the human/interface. The human/interface is then wired to a massive cybernetic apparatus that knows all the human/interface’s desires. Through behavioral economics, humans thus become component devices of a massive piece of market machinery. What is culture in a post-human world?
BTW, we do not need to look to Islam to see radical concepts of nature vs. technology. Nazi ideologies also espoused a Romantic and Rousseauean return to “natural,” non-urbanized forms of society. Nature is not merely natural; it is also a programmed social construct. This is seen in Nazi slogans like Strength through joy, Blut und Boden, and Lebensraum.
Those phrases were among the first mass media memes ever created. Media sound bites such as Weapons of Mass Destruction, Liberation (of Iraq,) Support Our Troops, and War On Terrorism have a similarly reductive and imperialistic effect.
Since the military’s resources are unparalleled, its ability to conduct a culture war on its own people is without comparison. Be all that you can be. An Army of One. A few good men. Join the navy and see the world. Under the military-industrial complex’s massive social engineering, war has become the unifying force of American society. As with almost all large technological developments, the military was one of the principle sources behind the creation of the human/interface – a world where humans are transformed into components of a massive cybernetic weapon.