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Originally Posted by clutnuckle
Well that's a perfectly understandable thing to do (the discontinuing thing), but in the end... If the hipster wanna do it, let them? There are things that we objectively, as humans, need, and excessive luxury is not necessarily that. I wouldn't call pampering people a technological advancement. Something that facilitates existence, like what that card was intended to do (but ultimately failed as you said), I completely understand. But if it's just a random invention with really no merit aside from giving a few people a breather every once in a while because they now have an app that teaches you how to tie a tie... I don't really see that as inventive at all. It's inventive in the basic sense of the word, but a phone that has a ring with a frequency outside of the human capability of hearing is also inventive. What would that even accomplish? A few missed phone calls?
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Do such phones actually exist?
Anyway, yes, there are basic needs that we humans
qua humans need to have fulfilled lest we drop dead, but I hope that you're not proposing to limit the means of fulfillment to these needs and these needs only? Based on what moral stance would you want to hinder the iPhone hipster to enhance his gadget with silly apps, based on his own decision and pay for it with his own means?
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Originally Posted by clutnuckle
I find that information to suit my theory just as well as yours... Discovery in the present day is much the same as it was back then, and thus there will be the same presence of suppression due to the fear of new, shocking ideas (though I suppose to far more limited degree). My last post probably made it seem as though I think everything came from the past, but I'll be clear that I know originality plays an important role.
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I'd rather put it this way: Discovery itself is a core ambition in the nature of the human psyche, as well as the quest to conceptualize the discoveries into something meaningful. The way we do it however, changes over time and even if we've refined the scientific methods up to now, we still have even more refined methods ahead of us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by clutnuckle
I don't see how this matters. I was talking about how their music was suppressed, and how it was forced into obscurity. A person's hygiene and their inability to get fame don't really affect that suppression. Those are just unlucky occurrences. The suppression, however, would happen when something occurred that was generally threatening to what a certain populous wanted - that doesn't necessarily inherit poverty or obscurity. Popular court artists and a lowly scrub could have been equally affected by the banhammer, so to speak. Much of the important music of any 'old' (very vague word but you'll get the gist) era was well-preserved, too; at least on the general end of the classical spectrum. The composers who generally changed the flow of musical history have lavished biographies, anthologies, and their music still remains popular, if only in the subconscious.
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It might sound odd to claim that your rise to musical fulfillment is hindered by the lack of soap, but I wasn't really talking about music in particular here, rather the conditions of mankind in general. In any case, they are not unlucky occurrenses as much as today's hygiene standard is a lucky one. Remember that we started without any means at all and that everything that make us live longer and healthier than ever and allow us to do more things than ever, are products of the workings of man and not nature-given.
Regarding the music of yore, I was not really talking about the musical elite that cooked up all the classical music we know and love still today. It was basically the lucky few that got access to the instruments and the musical education. And even so, they still would get no further than to immortalize their works on sheets and one would have to assemble a full orchestra (depending on the work, of course) to relive the experience. Meanwhile we can crank up our SoulSeek and type in the composer's name to do it. (Or buy ourselves a CD, which still is way easier than to gather together the local philharmonics).
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Originally Posted by clutnuckle
I'm not saying a revolution will happen tomorrow, but I do see a grave change coming. Possibly not in our lifetimes, but analyzing the course of history makes it pretty certain that something is bound to happen. Stability appears all over the timeline of this planet, and it can be very easily eliminated. I never really even hinted towards the apocalypse or anything that drastic. My most drastic claim in this thread was a 'mild' hint at North Korea taking over the world, and I meant that purely in humor.
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The apocalyptic scenario was not very serious on my part either, for the record. I still don't think it's accurate to make predicitons about the future, or even not-so-distant future, based on what has happened before, if only because of the differences in the basic conditions throughout history compared to today.