The automobile laconically runs down pedestrians. It gnaws into the side of a barn or else, grinning, it flies down a slope. It can't be blamed for anything. Its conscience is... clear... It only fulfillls its destiny. It is destined to wipe out the world. from Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg's , The Life of the Automobile , published in 1929. Worldwide three quarters of a million people are killed every year on the roads. More people between five and 44 die in car crashes in the Third World than are killed by any single disease. 3,508 people were killed in road accidents in 2003 in the UK, and 33,707 were seriously injured. 171 of those killed were children. Since 1899 motor vehicles have killed over 2.5 million Americans, and permanently injured 43 million. The Humane Society estimates that more than one million animals are killed every day on US roads. It has been estimated that motor vehicles kill more animals than the fur trade and animal experimentation industry combined, ...
Comments
With regard to the main question, I picture most people listening to the computer playing the Goldberg out of curiosity and then moving on. If it did indeed play the work like Gould, the point would escape me altogether, though they did well to constantly invoke Gould's name, for his obsession with the perfect recording suggests one performance fixed in time, which I take it is what the computer 'performance' would also be.
That brings to mind those artists -- Curzon, Serkin, et al. -- who had to be dragged to the studio, or Celibidache, who wouldn't record in a studio at all, because the idea of a fixed performance was alien to them. And so, we have fixed performances from Gould and a computer, but I think there are few of us who would not turn to Perahia, Hewitt, Tureck et al. for greatly varied performances, and the concert hall where inspiration of the moment (notable with Arrau, Cherkassky, though I'm straying from the Goldberg again here) may make for magic moments.
So, no, we don't NEED genius robots. But I was delighted that your blog was mentioned and given due credit in the discussion, Bob, and in tones of such well-deserved respect.