The lecture on technology and citizenship and the argument between Jefferson and Hamilton was honestly my favorite lecture thus far in the semester. I found it interesting to learn the reasons that Jefferson and Hamilton hate each other, I had no idea that it was due to the different view between wanting a  “diverse industrial nation” and an “agricultural nation.” Personally, I don’t know which view I agree with more. I agree with Jefferson on the importance of land maintenance in terms of farming but at the same time I agree with Hamilton on the importance of becoming an industrialized nation. I never paid much attention to how the further west, especially the mid-west how square the states are. I just figured it was because the states were boring and didn’t have much interesting geography too them. The thing that I found the most interesting in lecture was when we started talking about segmentation solutions. We looked up my zip code in class and I did not agree with it at all initially. After class, I pulled it back up again and like you said in class if this doesn’t describe yourself and your family it probably describes someone. That in fact it does, it described a good majority of the people I went to high school with. One last closing note, I think that it is sad that everything has gone to a mass marker/ corporation feel in every store. In terms of grocery stores, you walk in and they all look the same in regards to what is stocked on the shelves.

Sarah White 

How Music Got Free written by Stephen Witt is an exciting and thrilling book about how the digital music industry came about. Before reading this book I never thought about how itunes, spofity, pandora, and downloads came about i just figured it came about how everything else develops. I was born the year that music piracy became a thing, but even during my childhood my mom and I always bought CD’s. It wasn’t till I was in middle school that I began using an mp3 player and ipods. I feel like nobody really looks at downloading music “illegally” as a criminal conspiracy because it is seen as such a common thing in the world. Especially among those younger generations and students. One thing that surprised me most about the book was the fact that “the network” of people trading music and such weren’t caught for years. The explanation about universal and their sale is a perfect example of how listeners don’t necessarily care about the quality of music and production, they care about accessibility more than anything.  “Universal was selling one out of three albums in the United States, and one out of four in the world. But it wasn’t enough: even as the music industry’s number one supplier, Universal’s overall top-line revenues had gone down. The compact disc was going obsolete, and the revenue streams that Steve Jobs had promised him from iTunes were failing to materialize. Digital sales of music accounted for 1 percent of Universal’s revenues in 2005.” The last thing that I am going to touch on with this is the aspect of what this has done to musicians in the world. I think in a way the new digital era takes away money from musicians, but at the same time they make hundreds and thousands of dollars on music sales. It’s a really interesting point and concept to look at that I personally have never really given any thought to until reading this book.

Sarah White 

What exactly is sound? Sound is all around us, its the noise that we hear, people’s voices and much more but what is sound actually defined as. Sound is pressure waves, traveling through the air. It makes sense when Professor O’Malley stated without air there is no sound, since the definition of sound is waves traveling through the air. We’ve been learning about pitch and frequency since probably middle school and its determined by the frequency but the thing that confused me in this lecture was the tutorial we watched about understanding sound waves. It made no sense to me even after Professor O’Malley explained it but it seemed as if the entire class was a little on the confused side. I am looking forward to discussing “How music got free” on Wednesday!

Sarah White 

In class on Tuesday we discussed sampling in the music industry and just what that looked like. Before this lecture if someone asked me what sampling was, I probably would have said something to do with food and trying stuff. “Sampling” that we talked about in class was referring to taking a small piece of audio and replaying it somewhere else. You showed us images of the Mellotron, which can play up to 6 different instruments I believe was amazing !! As you said in class this was first used by rock bands, and that makes sense since rock music was so intricate. I had to leave this class early for an appointment but just before I left we began talking about turntables. It was amazing to see just how much you could do to create a piece of music. It’s sad that people don’t use turntables in today’s times, but it is how music has gotten where it has today and history should never be forgotten. Until next class !

Sarah White