I had a great conversation with a friend today about the way interaction technologies go through phases, eventually finding a place where they fit well with how people actually function best.
It’s a sort of Darwinian process, whereby technology gradually adapts itself to arrive at what really works best for humans. For example, musical instruments that people can use more effectively to make compelling music tend to win out over ostensibly more impressive musical instruments that are less expressive in human hands.
My friend raised the topic of recorded music collections. I don’t think many people believe we will ever cycle back to an interface that feels exactly like the long-playing record collection. Yet there was something about that interface, an emotionally compelling physicality, that is absent from iTunes, Pandora, Spotify and all of the cyber alternatives for sharing music.
When you visited a friend who had a record collection, there was always something in their collection — perhaps that one song by an obscure band you could never hear on the radio — that you wanted to listen to. The act of sliding the record out of its sleeve, handing it to your friend, the placing of the needle in the groove, all these acts had a ritual quality which added immensely to the feeling of emotional closeness between the listeners.
Now of course, you just scroll down a list on a screen and click on the name of a song. Perhaps at some point people will feel that something is missing from this abstracted way of doing things. And when they do, will new forms of physical interaction replace the rather disembodied way we currently share music?
As our technologies mature, will some kind of physicality reemerge — not because we need it to, but because we want it to?
I think this may be a case of you don’t miss what you never had. You and I grew up with the physicality and ritual of records, so we might miss aspects of that now, as much as we enjoy the convenience of online music. (Actually, the convenience far outweighs the nostalgia for me in this area of life). OTOH, music is very important in the life of my teenage daughter, but I don’t think she would say that she felt anything missing in how she shares music with friends. The physicality comes from being together. They have their own rituals, like sitting in the back seat of the car sharing a single set of earbuds attached to an ipod. (One earbud each—which sometimes leads to comments like “oh, you have the drum track”—and they decline when I offer to plug it into the car’s speakers).
Speaking of record collections…
Another twist on this was the years Napster was active. I’ll never forget what a thrill it was, for the first time, to hear any song you wanted instantly. And you had the whole world’s music collection at your fingertips. Everything. You want to hear that cover of “Big Rock Candy Mountain” you heard at your uncle’s house? British marching band music from the 1950’s? That one album your dorm friend had you could never find? Napster had it.
There are plenty of ways to find music now. But that magic year or two when all your favorite music swept back into your life is an event to remember.