Elton John to World: Tear This Internet Down!
Celebrity musicians say the darndest things. We’re still reflecting on the layers of meaning in Bob Dylan’s “New records have sound all over them.” And along comes Elton John, to say:
Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet…
I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span.
There’s too much technology available.
Why we must close the net [The Sun Online, bastion of journalism that it is]
Darnit, I knew something was screwing up modern music. It’s … CDM! I mean, come on, it’s not like people like me are just sitting around blogging instead of actually making som– Oh. Ahem. See your point.
Okay, in fairness, we’re once again taking something zany out of context. Sir Elton was mainly pointing out that actually being together with people is more fun than just hanging around your computer, and then makes the radical statement that maybe the world would be a better place if people actually did something rather than blogging about it. And, naturally, I kind of tend to agree.
While we’re at it, Bob Dylan turned out to be right, too — modern records do have sound all over them.
Of course, it wasn’t the Internet that was the big culprit — if anything, the Internet is galvanizing online audiences, encouraging collaboration and creative music making, and helping artists resurrect live music. (Just use it in moderation, folks. If you’re looking at those stupid cats enough that you’ve actually lost the ability to play your instrument, you’ve probably gone too far.)
Only one invention had the power to transform a society that made music in their living rooms into one that became largely passive consumers of a few superstar artists. That’d be … the phonograph. It did give us some awesome music, though, so I don’t think we did all bad.
I’m more curious about how we’re tearing down the Internet. I know how we can tear down this tiny little corner of the Internet — digg/slashdot a story enough and even our mighty, new server will come crashing to the ground. Not sure about the rest, though. Ideas?
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