Overview
- Analyzes varied sources ranging from mix tapes to iTunes and High Fidelity to Neutral Milk Hotel
- Assesses the question of the intrinsic value of music in the digital environment through cultural, business, and philosophical approaches
- Reaches to historical and contemporary examples of music technology and to evaluate the tensions between the "magic" of music and the "rational" limitations placed upon it by industry
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book proposes that new music technologies attract unconscious desires for socialism and collectivity, enabling millions of people living under capitalism to dream of repressed social alternatives. Grounded in the philosophical writings of Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin, the book examines file sharing technologies, streaming services, and media players, as well as their historical antecedents, such as the player piano, cassette tape, radio and compact disc, alongside interpretations of fiction, memoir, and albums. Through the concept of wish images—the unconscious hopes and desires for social alternatives that gather around new technologies—the book identifies the repressed pre- and post-capitalist urges that attend our music technologies. While these desires typically remain unconscious and tend to pass away not only unmet but also unrecognized, Hope and Wish Image in Music Technology attempts to bring wishes for social alternatives to the surface at an auspicious moment of technological transition.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
David P. Rando is Associate Professor of English at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA. He is the author of Modernist Fiction and News: Representing Experience in the Early Twentieth Century, as well as articles on modernist and contemporary fiction.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Hope and Wish Image in Music Technology
Authors: David P. Rando
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34015-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-34014-2Published: 28 November 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-81657-9Published: 23 June 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-34015-9Published: 15 November 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVI, 191
Topics: Music, Media and Communication, Philosophy of Technology, Literature and Technology/Media