Annotated Bibliography

I’m not sure if I want to connect music to technology or see how technology has become sort of ‘alive’. I’ll see which I end up being more interested in.

Lethem, Jonathan. "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism." The New Humanities Reader

 (2015): 210-231

This is about how not all plagiarism is bad. If a person is passionate about another’s work, they have every right to work off of what another person has done, as long as they give create where it is due. All musicians need to plagiarize in order to start creating new music, their thoughts and ideas come from past ones, not out of the void.

Nelson, Maggie. “Great to Watch”The New Humanities Reader 2015: (300-311)

“Great to Watch” is claiming that we as a society have become so used to violence that we are becoming desensitized to it. However, this is due to conditioning and we can grow to become something else. New technology can be a great thing but it is also dangerous. I feel I can somehow connect this to music in technology and display how music could slow violence.

Sherry, Turkle. “Selections from Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other” The New Humanities Reader (2015): (458-478)

This is about computers and how they can seem to be alive, specifically Turkle discusses ELIZA, tamagotchis, furbies, Merlin, and BIT. All these programmed things displayed several emotions making them seem almost alive. The point is that eventually there could be a singularity where robots develop into fully emotional functioning beings. If we can come this far with robots, we could make music programs and robots to create new music.

Reeves, Byron, and Clifford Nass. How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge, UK: CSLI Publications and Cambridge university press, 1996.

This talks about how people can feel a great need to enter into a relationship with a machine. Furthering the idea that one day machines and humans can be ‘partners/ lovers’ of sorts.

Winnicott, Donald Woods. Playing and reality. Psychology Press, 1971.

Winnicott discusses the whole idea of transitional objects and how babies are affected. He believes it is hard to give specific examples because his idea of our external and shared reality is so infinite. This can relate to how humans can have a need of love to come from robots and other non-living objects.