Bladerunner XXX

Since I bashed the technology of our time in my last blog entry, a defensive front was launched.  It was a good thing.  It reminded me that there have been some great strides in modern technology.  The only thing is now I can't remember them.  One was Alexa.  Bezos's invention, or rather his further expansion of voice recognition software into Alexa, was an entrepreneurial achievement.  Apple, before Time Cooke, all ready has developed most of the things any computer company is marketing today.  Tim Cooke just took nerdy professional home computing, computing not done on the UNIX platform in a company, watered it down, sprinkled it with pop, and addicted most of America.  Even adults took a bite of his apple.  When a plumber comes to you home to fix a leak in you tub oozing through your downstairs ceiling umbilically attached to his phone talking to his wife....  He couldn't even put the phone down long enough to tighten the pressure fittings.  He acted like it was an inconvenience for him to be there fixing his partner's mistake.  Finally he put the phone down on the toilet seat and in a few seconds fixed our problem.  In the process he broke the fifty-two year old tub trap.  Not only did his partner leave without tightening the fittings, he didn't plug the tub when he drilled through the tile.  All of that debris went into the tub trap and clogged it up.  This guy acted like we were fabricating the whole thing.  His only point of interest was having to come back and replace ALL of the tub's pipes in the ceiling to fix one broken screw.  We had been waiting for them to return for a few days, and now they wanted us to wait two more weeks with the ceiling caving in downstairs.  It's hit and miss with plumbers, just like it is with auto mechanics.  Most of the time they are pitching you a repair that doesn't exist.  Anyway, Tim took Apple's great products, laced them with crack cocaine, and started going to the bank.  Never was I interested in "apps."  Microsoft's first versions of Word were the best.  Later, like most things today, companies lost direction, focus, and morality.  Computing has become a crap shoot of keeping up.  Apple and the rest, because the best products all ready have been made years ago, just keep tweaking their operating systems to make your life more difficult.  The biggest erroneous trend was basing your home computing, not web browsing, on the internet.  Registering your products.  Receiving product support.  Banking.  This opened the door for Chinese and Russian hackers to bugger the lot of us.  Anyone who would trust their information to a plural cloud server is stupid.  You deserve to get hacked and lose your information.  I don't even use Drop Box.  Because I have been a professional composer for a while, I protect my work.  It all is copyrighted by the Library of Congress Copyright Office.  I have certificates for each submission, and there are a lot.  Today, like everything else, the significance of copyright seems moot.  Once, when ASCAP and BMI were power players in the entertainment industry and collected royalties, copyright was important.  Today the modern technology consort has deemed artistic content, almost everything, worthless.  Technology, really internet technology, with digital streaming dramatically has lessened the value of visual media.  If your content is available on an unsecured internet, then how can it have value?  Music was first, and Mr. Napster is responsible for the collapse of the recording industry.  I can understand using a hard drive as your home entertainment system.  It is convenient especially if you work on a ship.  I debated buying a laptop computer for a long time.  After I did iTunes became indispensable to me as a professional tool.  I archived everything I had ever done musically, performances, compositions, and the like.  When a Guest Entertainer came to a ship, most likely I would have a self made recording of their show.  I never shared it with anyone, but it was a valuable learning tool.  I used a Sharp mini disc player with a specialty miniature condenser mic.  German engineers created the compression scheme for the mini disc player, and the modern MP4 we use for digital music is based on it.  The mini disc sounds incredibly good, and I have hung onto these machines.  I have four, and three microphones.  I prefer them to any stand along portable MP4 recorder available today.  When I stopped playing on ships for a living, it took a long time to acclimate to the old school.  I still had my stereo equipment from back in the day, just like I had all of my professional music gear.  It just needed TLC.  The turntable finally I pitched into the garbage only a few weeks ago, but the rest of it I still use.  I have begun to appreciate again CD's, DVD's, vinyl albums, and cassette tapes.  I have my great uncle's vintage classical collection on vinyl, I have tapes I made while studying for general exams at OSU, and I have CD's and DVD's.  Most of the DVD's were purchased while working on the ships.  Before the crew channels began showing first run movies, I carried these around in folders for late night entertainment.  The laptop is a great faux miniature movie theater which sits on your chest as you are lying in your bunk.  Now I am remembering how to use all of this information.  It dawned on me that part of your life is spent collecting invaluable media, and part of your life is intended to consume it.  We must remember when it is okay to consume.  In times of spiritual malaise, political despair, and depression it becomes time to look to this media for upliftment.  I went to see Bladerunner last night, and I was shocked that it became a horror film.  It was a heavy worthy movie, but it was more emotional intensity than I expected.  I will give it the prize for what is happening in the world today:  How to make as much money as possible from nothing.  The musical score for Bladerunner was the epitome of this philosophy.  I have not yet looked up the composer for the score, but I can say without a doubt that it seemed like a beginner.  This leads me to believe that Bladerunner was a low budget film.  Computers can do a lot these days, but the visuals were pretty high brow.  The music was not in the same category.  They did what people do today.  Without having an understanding of a craft, you just turn up the EQ.  Take some crappy digital samples, and turn up each band of EQ until the sounds morphs from instrument into sound effect.  That's what most modern films do anyway, jungle drums and low frequency sound effects.  The sheer volume in the theater turned the film into a horror experience.  The sounds of war, machines, violence, and death were omnipresent, and they were effective enough.  They amateurishly were created.