05-20-2020, 02:50 AM
This is remarkable, amazing insight.
I have typically considered technology highly capricious as a driver of society. Obviously financing, without which nothing gets done, matters greatly -- as does formal organization and the ability to market a technology. Telegraph to radio (through wireless telegraphy) and then television does not move smoothly. Still photography to moving pictures and recorded sound did not harmonize until 1929, and after that the content of entertainment changed from largely live (vaudeville and the infamous burlesque) to recorded. Technological refinements matter greatly... but even with that I enjoy recordings of Rachmaninov performing the solo parts of his piano concertos and Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini from as early as 1929 -- Rachmaninov was a superb pianist in his own right, and who better knew how to perform his piano works and parts? Then there is Gershwin as his own interpreter... recordings also
obviously limited by his demise before the really good recording technologies of the 1940's.
OK, I am discussing communications and entertainment, but such is much of our lives, especially during the Plague of 2020, when live entertainment is largely in hiatus.
I have typically considered technology highly capricious as a driver of society. Obviously financing, without which nothing gets done, matters greatly -- as does formal organization and the ability to market a technology. Telegraph to radio (through wireless telegraphy) and then television does not move smoothly. Still photography to moving pictures and recorded sound did not harmonize until 1929, and after that the content of entertainment changed from largely live (vaudeville and the infamous burlesque) to recorded. Technological refinements matter greatly... but even with that I enjoy recordings of Rachmaninov performing the solo parts of his piano concertos and Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini from as early as 1929 -- Rachmaninov was a superb pianist in his own right, and who better knew how to perform his piano works and parts? Then there is Gershwin as his own interpreter... recordings also
obviously limited by his demise before the really good recording technologies of the 1940's.
OK, I am discussing communications and entertainment, but such is much of our lives, especially during the Plague of 2020, when live entertainment is largely in hiatus.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.