#module six

Before reading the chapters of Thompson’s book, I went on a little associative trail. I looked up some of the other things he was involved with, just to get to know him as a person first. On the book’s website there are some links to his SXSW talks/involvement, which was of no surprise to me given the book’s subject matter.  Then I searched his name on google and found out that the only thing in common, social media wise, was our mutual follower on Twitter…Lil B the BasedGod. Funny enough, he is an extremely successful man. To the internet youth, that success could be attested to the fact that the BasedGod follows him on Twitter. After a while, a lot of my trails led to the book’s website.  Interestingly enough, these somewhat mindless interactions between my research of the author and technology would guide my thinking when I started to read the book.

During my reading of the chapters, I began to understand some of the ideas that Thompson was playing with. The most intriguing part, in my opinion, were his statements regarding the “centaurs” playing in chess tournaments in the first chapter of the book. The idea that humans and computers in tandem can yield not necessarily better results, but different results, is something that makes a lot of sense to me. From some of the other things we’ve read during the course, it is evident that some people believe that technology has caused a very bad problem and relentless dependency on technology for every day tasks that were once easily completed without tech. Describing the collaboration of technology and humans as “centaurs” I believe that Thompson is able to convey the coexistence of tech and human beings as not only okay, but a new category of task. I’m sure that there are still chess competitions that are for humans only. There are probably computer-only chess competitions as well, but the competitions that include both human and computers together, as teammates provide a new, fresh, and innovative way to play an age old game. The idea, in my opinion, is extremely futuristic and I’m glad I know about it now. I wonder how many other games/competitions that were formerly human-based now have “centaur” brackets.  

After reading Thompson’s Smarter Than You Think I began to reflect on how some of his ideas and thoughts applied to the art/creative world. I started looking up DJ’s that were highly trained with predominantly analog systems. Meaning vinyl and non-computer based mixing. Basically, it was all about hearing the mix not seeing it. Then I looked at DJ’s who used mostly computer based mixing. It was extremely similar to the chess situation. There were purists that believed that the original mixing, that of vinyl and analog mixers, was the true form of mixing. On top of that, they go further to say that computer based mixing provides so much assistance that the DJ is no longer anything but a curator of a playlist. While they do admit to the computer making their work as DJ’s easier, but there is still a large amount to learn. The hybrids however (those who use vinyl and computers) are able to do something very interesting by mixing the two techniques. Those who are able to combine the two techniques of using vinyl/analog mixing with computer based mixing create an innovative style that mixes the old sounds of vinyl with the digital sounds of computers. Beyond the mixing, it creates a new industry all together. There are all new companies providing hardware to convert analog mixes to digital mixes which allows those who can do both an unlimited world of possibilities.