How would you feel if your children were watching an unregulated tv show? Growing up, my parents did a great job of regulating what I watched on TV. Although, most families probably did not understand what to let their kids watch and not watch on a daily basis. TV started out only play between 6 to 10 stations, mainly for the news stations. TV was designated to appeal to the mass market, hoping to allow everyone to enjoy the television. Although, Cable TV has much fewer band witch restrictions because their is no rationale for regulating it. I believe it is up to the parents to regulate what their child watches, especially since their is no rationale for regulating it before being viewed. Moving forward, it is fundamental human interest that drives us to watch shows on TV. On a weekly basis, I watch “how to get away with murder”, and honestly I am highly interested in watching the show but I do not understand why they allow this show to be viewed. It has an affect on public self because it shows inappropriate scenes that should be regulated.  Public self has to accept it, yet private self would find questionable. Although, why are shows such as “how to get away with murder” so popular? It has a fundamentally human interest to watch shows on TV that have an inappropriate aspect to it.

MP3, what an interesting book to read for this course. The book overall was hard to read but it made a little more sense when we talked about it in class. Looking at how music is squeezed down to 4 mega bites is a really interesting concept. Only 12% of the song is actually what you are listening too, and the people taking apart of the song is actually removing all parts that you can’t hear. The idea was that MP3 music was compressed to be listened too in an efficient amount of time. Is the music really efficient if we aren’t efficiently listening? Why is music that is utterly compressed popular with this generation?  It goes back to the topic of music being impoverish, music you can listen to without having to pay attention. Music affects us in different ways, why would we want to take advantage of it?

Another interesting find within the book was when they talked about Bell Labs experimenting with the cat, and using the brain to demonstrate hearing sound waves. Scientists would talk on one end, and send pulses into the cats brain. According to MP3, scientists would also use elephant heads to experiment with hearing. Why were these techniques popular? It bottles my mind when I ask this question because the techniques were quite outrageous. It is intriguing to think that most experiments that are happening, you actually don’t know are occurring all around the world.

The physics of sound is the topic we covered in class this week following Claude Shannon with the basic elements of any general communication system. The general communications system includes a source of information which is a transmitting device that transforms the information or “message” into a form suitable for transmission by a particular means. The information has to have an order to it rather than being random. We have to look at what is the minimum amount of information to send through the general communication system. Digital media is an unnatural entity that has alienated social aspects. The question purposed in class was “What does technology do to us”? Technology has driven people to only be focused on the screen of our phones or computers. It has affected the social aspects of our lives because it has caught our attention as being the only way to grab our attention. People find attraction with technology because it keeps us included in everybody else lives. Why do we need to be apart of other peoples lives? Why can’t we focus on our own lives and living it the way we should live it? Will people ever live life fully if their face is stuck in a small screen? I wonder what would happen if technology was suddenly taken away from us. Unfortunately we would never find out as technology progresses into the future.

Is there such a thing as an original idea? This question pops into my mind when I think of sampling. Sampling is the technique of digitally encoding music or sound and reusing it as part of a composition or recording. When we think of sampling, Claude Shannon sparks the idea that information can be digitalized. Sampling has moved into forms such as records and digital audio. An example that we viewed in class as a form of sampling was Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”, performed in the movie “Back to the Future” by Micheal J. Fox.  In my mind, why would sampling be such a popular idea? Are artists trying to bring back popular songs from the past or are most artists aren’t as creative as we think? Honestly, I did not know that sampling was an actual concept and I certainly did not know it was an issue among several artists. After learning about sampling, its hard to determine originality among artists I hear on the radio every single day. I think if individuals knew if the song was original or not, then it would help define better authenticity for the artists themselves.

Why is it so popular?

Denis Diderot published the first encyclopedia in 1751 during the Enlightenment Period. During this period in time, encyclopedias were categorized and were for the more “serious” readers. Following the Enlightenment Period, the encyclopedia became a significant household object. Families possessing the encyclopedia within their home showed that the members of the family were highly educated and knowledgable. It showed that these people cared about learning. Although as I look into this thought process, I have to wonder, did the encyclopedia define a family as much as people thought it did? The information could have been subjective, giving a sign that families may not have been as educated as they believed.

Following the encyclopedia, the free software movement came into affect. People could use this software as much as they pleased, letting information being free because it is vital to all of us. Wikipedia has continued the trend of having information being free by letting anyone contribute to topics covered within the program. The idea is that if more eyeballs are on the topic covered, then the better it will be. Although, can it be trusted? Is the information absolutely true? If the more information provided in Wikipedia becomes better as more people contribute, then why do teachers at public/private schools not allow students to use it as a reference? I have never been able to provide Wikipedia as a reference for academic purposes, yet we are purposing the idea that information should not be restricted and Wikipedia gets better everyday. I agree that information should not be restricted, although I do not know how much I trust sites such as Wikipedia.

This week we had the opportunity to research a music genre of our choice. I decided to research boogaloo because I hadn’t heard of this word before and I thought it was a funny word. Looking at Google Books Ngram Viewer, I found that Boogaloo was not heard of until about 1962 and had a peak period around 1970. Boogaloo is an a form of latin music incorporating R&B, mambo, and rock& roll. It seemed that most artists did not devote an entire album to this particular music genre, yet artists still created boogaloo type music. Around 1970, salsa started emerging as a type of music, making boogaloo old news in a sense. Although, a few artists included boogaloo in their albums for comic relief. From my perspective, boogaloo wasn’t a popular type of music and it seemed that other genres took over the music industry.

I find it really fascinating how computing became a phenomenon during the Vietnam War and Cold War. The area of spending was mostly put towards computers, especially since digital computers replaced analogue computers. These computers were made with vacuum tubes and when you had to replace a bad tube, someone had to check the 19,000 different possibilities. Wouldn’t you love to have that job? It must have taken forever to find the right tube. It’s really interesting how dependent people became on these computers, and here we are today in the modern world, still very dependent on computers. The evolution of computers is an interesting topic and it was intriguing to learn how they transitioned from analogue to digital.

Reading “Segregating Sound”, there was one particular idea that stuck out at me. It was the thought about how folklore studies and the music industry helped create a “musical color line” that played along with the Jim Crow laws, separating white Americans from African Americans. I agree with this thought because I do believe white Americans were caught up in the defining line of race, that it overflowed into how music correlated with people. An example of this music defining line would be how blues came from African Americans, whereas country music came from white Americans. Its thoughts like these that really show how the Jim Crow laws affected people.

A figure that emerged out of this era was Lead Belly, who was a folks blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was born in Mooringsport, Louisiana and had a notoriously violent life. He committed a murder in 1918 but sang a song for the governor of Texas to get let out early. After trying to commit another murder in 1930, he was discovered by folklorists John Lomax and Alan Lomax. Learning about Lead Belly, I find it interesting that he was such a violet man, yet he played music very well and got out of prison multiple times. Honestly, I would call it luck that he was able to make music even though he ran into some issues, its quite interesting.

The real question of this week is why was a lynching an activity during the “Great Migration”? The other question is why was it put on postcards? I don’t understand the thought process behind such ridiculous ideas that people come up with. Honestly, I would not want to receive a postcard that has a picture of someone being lynched nor do I approve of what they did to the African American population during this time period. We also took a look at “race” records, how they appeared in the 1920’s. They were advertised to white people and African Americans. It is hard for me to understand how people bought these records as well as attended lynching events because in my mind, it is really awful and all around racist. I would never buy a “race” record, let alone attend a lynching event. It is absolutely disgusting that people used to do this as a regular thing.

This week we talked about minstrel shows, how white people would wear black faces to put on performances. I agree that this was a very strange phenomenon and I found it to be an awful way to put african americans down. I honestly had never heard of minstrel shows before this class and I couldn’t believe this was an actual event that occurred. When we examined the photo of Billy King, it was quite disturbing. His teeth were overly exaggerated and his expression looked as though he was in extreme pain. I think the idea of minstrel shows connecting to the idea of carnivals is something that is not surprising. In a carnival atmosphere, the idea is that the original rules are suspended and you are allowed to be something that you are not on a regular basis. I believe minstrel shows were an outlet for white citizens to explore the idea of being almost inhuman but at the same time it made for some really awful jokes towards the African American people.