Digital
Related: digital art - sampling - monde
The compact disc was launched in 1982. The advantage of the CD is that it was digital, which helped prepare the P2P (Napster et all) revolution of the late nineties.
The work of art in the age of digital reproduction
"The work of art in the age of digital reproduction is physically and formally chameleon. There is no clear conceptual distinction now between original and reproduction in virtually any medium based in film, electronics, or telecommunications. As for the fine arts, the distinction is eroding, if not finally collapsed. The fictions of 'master' and 'copy' are now so entwined with each other that it is impossible to say where one begins and the other ends. In one sense, Walter Benjamin's proclamation of doom for the aura of originality, authored early in this century, is finally confirmed by these events. In another sense, the aura, supple and elastic, has stretched far beyond the boundaries of Benjamin's prophecy into the rich realm of production itself. Here in this realm, often mislabelled 'virtual' (it is actually a realer reality, or RR), both originality and traditional truth (symbolized by the unadorned photographic 'fact') are being enhanced, not betrayed. But the work of art is not only changing its form and means of delivery. By far its most provocative extension is into the intimate bowels of our body, mind, and spirit. Besides this, all changes, even the Internet, even our recent evolution into the World Wide Web, pale. No single element of the messaging now going on disturbs the guardians of traditional modernity more than this single fact."(Douglas Davis, The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction) via http://www.obsolete.com/artwork/reproducibility.html
Digital identity
I read somewhere today in an ICT magazine, that it is estimated that by end of year, 50% of all email will be spam. This is not as surprising at it may sound since we are already at 40% at this very moment, according to the same study. At the moment, hotmail has the best solution to the problem; you can set your account to receive only emails from people who are already in your addressbook. This also means that somebody who has your email address but you don't add them to your list, that person won't be able to send you mail. This brings us to shared address books. When we add each other as as buddies, any change in either address book is adjusted in the other's addressbook as well. Of course, this is the fight about who a consumer will trust his digital identity with. Three contenders are in the field at the moment: Microsoft with Hotmail and Messsenger, Aol and Yahoo! with similar offerings.Digidub
D is for Digi-DubDub in the post-analogue era (listen to Sly & Robbie's "Computer Malfunction"), or Digi-Dub, the South East London sound system posse of remixers and neo-dub recordists. -- A-Z Of Dub from The Wire 123 (May 94) © 1997 The Wire.
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