You cannot aggregate taste

My recent listening has included Ballett by the legend of German electronic music Klaus Schulze. Spanning four discs for its CD re-release, Ballett 1,2,3 & 4 expands Schulze's established electronic sound palett by the addition of violin, flute, cello and oboe. He explains, or rather dismisses, the neo-classical style of the pieces as follows:

 'Because of the cello, the songs of course have a slightly classical feeling. But: No! Though I like to connect electronic music with classical sound and structures, I won't suddenly start to compose "classically". Just as I won't publish the many poems I had written before doing my German studies, or exhibit Sunday paintings like McCartney – never mind the fact that I can't paint. I will also never write an autobiography; I stick to that which I'm good at. I never had any hobbies besides music, whether it be painting or writing. I always made music, as if focused on one thing only'.

Ballett is my taste, but it may not be yours. Because as Michael Harris points out in The End of Absence, despite the supposed wisdom of algorithms and AI, you cannot aggregate taste. Although first published in 2014, The End of Absence - sub-titled Reclaiming what we've lost in a world of constant connection - is even more painfully relevant today. This book should be compulsory reading for every online adult, as should Guillaume Pitron's The Dark Cloud. To illustrate the efficacy of The End of Absence, here are just a random few of the quotes I took away from it:

To Picasso, computers were useless since "They can only give you answers".

'In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office' - Henry David Thoreau

'What you use to interact with the world changes the way you see the world. Every lens is a tinted lens' - Michael Harris

'The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived' -  Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

'Human brains are exquisitely evolved to adapt to the environment in which they're placed. It follows that if the environment is changing in an unprecedented way, then changes too will be unprecedented... So the fear I have is not with the technology per se, but the way it's used by the native mind' - Susan Greenfield, Emeritus Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Oxford University 

'We all do no end of feeling and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is Public Opinion' - Mark Twain

'You cannot aggregate taste' - Michael Harris

Comments

Pliable said…
Susan Greenfield from Oxford University is quoted in my post. Regular followers of my paths may be interested in her book Zen and the Art of Consciousness - https://oneworld-publications.com/work/zen-and-the-art-of-consciousness/
4:27 pm
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