David Rowell's "The Endless Refrain" explores the pervasive influence of nostalgia on contemporary music culture. Rowell argues that the readily available digital archives of past music, coupled with the algorithms of streaming platforms, have created a cultural stagnation. Listeners are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of music, leading them to retreat to familiar favorites from their youth. This preference for the past, Rowell contends, actively hinders the appreciation and success of new music. The book examines the impact of this phenomenon on the music industry, artists, and listeners alike, offering a critical analysis of the current musical landscape. Ultimately, Rowell sounds an alarm, urging a renewed focus on and appreciation for contemporary musical creations.
This book tells the story of how a small group of libertarian entrepreneurs, including Peter Thiel and Larry Page, hijacked the original decentralized vision of the internet in the 1990s. It details how these firms created a surveillance marketing monoculture, tolerating piracy and promoting opaque business practices. Taplin offers a history of how these companies shaped online life and proposes solutions for artists to reclaim their audiences and reimagine the design of the World Wide Web.
While many of us fear a future in which all our online interactions are with algorithms, the young Florida based programming prodigy, Michael Sayman, actually looks forward to this brave new world. In fact, earlier this year he started a controversial social media app called SocialAI which exclusively feature bots responding to its human users. For Sayman, our ubiquitous interaction with smart machines is the inevitable future of the internet and so we should embrace it. It’s a generational thing, Sayman believes. Old people, he argues, are still clinging to so me nostalgic version of “humanity”, whereas people of his generation, who grew up online, understand that AI is just media - no different from books, movies, video games or music.
Teen entrepreneur, programmer, and student MICHAEL SAYMAN created an iOS app development company at thirteen, after teaching himself to code. Since then, he has gone on to create dozens of apps, which have been downloaded more than 3 million times worldwide.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.
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