And The Beat Goes On

The world is change. Today is not yesterday, and tomorrow is greatly unknown. There are few certainties in life, but one of them (aside from death and taxes) is the concept of uncertainty. Consider a world that was 100 years ago. Then think about it 50 years ago. It will likely stun you just how different the world was 5 years ago. But each day, the world predictably spins on its axis giving way to day and night. In these short bursts of light that shines onto our planet, the human species is very busy. Hard at work making minor changes that over a period of time amount to significant differences.

If you've ever heard of the futurist, Ray Kurzweil, you may be familiar with his theory called the law of accelerating returns. Essentially, he postulates that we're living in exponential times. What does that mean? Well, if you've ever seen an exponential graph before, you will recognize that during the beginning phases of the graph it is mostly a flat line that doesn't increase all that much. But with each subsequent step the graph takes, its quantity begins to increase incredibly rapidly. After a while, the graph almost begins to move vertically.

What does this theory suggest about our world? Kurzweil is expressing our species as a function of this mathematical principle.

Consider human existence. To focus our thinking, I'll start about 200,000 years ago, which Wikipedia sites as the emergence of modern humans. 200,000 years ago man lived in caves, had limited ability to communicate, and struggled to feed and clothe himself. This sustained for approximately 198,000 of those 200,000 years. Within the last 2000 years man has made significant strides.

We have begun to organize, utilize language to communicate, express ideas in writing, institute education, take part in agriculture and industry, construct structures like castles, bridges, houses, develop transportation, and even travel the wide expanse of space. These are remarkable changes that have all happened in a relatively short time when one considers the extent of the human species.

Kurzweil is suggesting that we are currently living in a time where those enormous increases in quantity that occur on an exponential curve, are occuring all around us every day.

This is complex notion to wrap one's mind around. The reason being is that a human's function individually on a daily basis, which is defined by the phases of light and dark that the sun shines on our planet as it rotates on its axis. However, due to the fact that there is a large number of humans on the planet these days (exponentially more so than thousands of years ago), and we have improved our ability to communicate and organize, the small actions that we perform daily combine to make enormous strides that were not possible hundreds of thousands of years ago.

I want to apply this notion to the music industry. And I don't want to just apply the notion of exponential progress, but rather, the change that accompanies it.

In order to understand music more fully, I decided to consult a text called Human by Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, the director of the University of California-Santa Barbara's SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, as well as its Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience.

Chapter 6 of the book addresses why humans have art (music being a form of art). Cultures all over the world display various type of art, whether it is through song, dance, storytelling, or painting. This supports an evolutionary theory of art being a part of natural selection. The fittest individuals were likely to be able to find food, shelter, and clothing, and have enough extra time to be creative.

Music has also been viewed as a social bonding system that assisted in synchronizing mood amd prepared various groups to act in unison, which helped with building coalitions. Music also has the ability to enhance our thinking abilities. Glenn Schellenberg, at the University of Toronto, found that music lessons in children were associated with small but long-lasting increases in IQ.

This makes sense because learning music requires "focused attention, abstract and relational thinking, and what is known as executive control in the brain" (242).

Above all, however, music is pleasurable for humans, and this is apparently a unique quality that our species possesses.

So, what does all of this suggest about the music industry? I think that the music industry is going to change. It is going through one currently. It used to be that major record labels were the only way to "make it" in the music business. However, the information age has changed the playing field.

Music will always be around, because we enjoy it. Yet, the vehichle through which music will be disseminated to the world will likely evolve as all things on the planet have. We ought to be open to these new avenues as they present themselves, because they can only be beneficial. Nothing ever moves backward, only forward in a new direction.