[quote author=“cr-78”][quote author=“nuit-exterieur”]Exactly my point…this device is like a little Kevorkian “death machine” for the cassette…recall the end of soylent Green, or the carbon freeze in Cloud City…; )—-
It’s people!!!!
Points to consider in the ontology of the cassette:
• It is physical. You can put it down, pick up where you left off, like a book. It is thus capable of being intimate with you (or vice-versa), in the most platonic way of course. A CD, to a lesser extent—it already is the avatar of data. And then: the MP3, on an iPod: pure data, divorced from physicality. When you play it, you have to think of “data” and are thus removed from the physical, intimate world. Thus: the cassette—which I admittedly haven’t used in a long time, although I grew up with them—retains an advantage.
• Regarding the disintegration of magnetic materials: all flesh is grass, and we all will, say in 60 years or so, pass the way of the chrome oxide on your TDK. Physical things are mortal. All must return to the realm of data (we may envision “data” as a sort of godhead, or universal One here). Thus: data (MP3’s, etc) also have an advantage, being (for all intents and purposes) immortal: data, having abandoned intimacy and the physical, lasts forever. Score one for the iPod
• The choice is not only a musical one, but a metaphysical one, as pointed out above. Where the bees fit into this isn’t exactly clear, but we’ve got a Cray down in the basement running the numbers. I suppose it’s cassettes if you’re a carnalist, iPods for those seeking the godhead. I leave it to you to come up with a musical equivalent for the Rapture, and it ain’t Soylent Green.
