Charlie Magdaleno: Blog

  In the middle of a discussion of recording and mixing tactics, my friend and engineer, Alex Esquivel, brought up a point that carried so much more weight than I think he realized:

  "The goal of technology these days is to re-create something that exists in the real world in an imaginary one."

  Although he was referring to the emergence and sophistication of DAW plug-ins aimed at re-creating the warmth and frequency grasp of analog recording in a purely digital format, what he said was so spot-on about technology as a whole.

  Think about it- what technological advances these days aren't about simulation?

  Video games such as Rock Band and Wii Sports simulate the experience of playing an actual instrument or a sport such as tennis or bowling.

  Social networking sites and applications such as Facebook, eHarmony, and AOL Instant Messenger exist to transplant human, social interaction (and all that comes with it) from the real word to the computer screen.

  However, if these "things" (ie. guitar-playing and conversation) exist in the real world already, what makes their digital counterparts so popular, so much more appealing?  Why do we bother spending so much time, energy, and money trying to create something "real," when the real thing exists already?

  Simply put- convenience.

  It's much more convenient to press the power button on your XBOX 360 KINECT and start playing a game of 9-hole than it is to pack your clubs, find and put on your plaid pants, drive to a golf course, stand out in the 90-degree sun, and throw out your back on your thirteenth practice swing.  Besides, you can curse a lot louder in your living room than you can in an actual sand trap.

  Speaking of adding insult to injury, another reason why such technologies are so popular is safety- not just physical, but emotional as well.

  For example, sending some sweet, young thang a message on Match.com is infinitely less pressure-filled than actually walking up to said hottie at the bar, dog park, art gala, or wherever the heck people meet people these days.  If she's not interested, she doesn't have to respond; and you can sulk in your quiet shame without having to be turned down in front of her friends, your friends, and the eight other women you considered pursuing.  Needless to say, it's much easier to "poke" that same gal on Facebook than it is at Barnes & Noble.

  While convenience and safety are all well and good, ones has to ask one's self- what's the downside?  It's no secret that every innovation is a double-edged sword.  After all, leave it to one of the world's most powerful sources of energy to also have the capacity to kill roughly 80,000 people in the course of day, and more than double that in the fallout that ended World War II.

  While I don't think hours of Just Dance 2 is necessarily going to lead to genocide or something, one has to consider the adverse effects of living in a world with MySpace and PS3 Move.

  One such affect, would be atrophy; and not just the weakening and lessing of our bodies, but of our minds and souls as well.

  It's amazing how much money and time we spend researching and putting together the perfect entertainment system, complete with the highest-definition television and digital surround sound systems on the market, just to make the big game on Sunday that much more "realistic" or "authentic" when we could be using that same money for gas and tickets to the big game itself.  

  In this way, while we don't necessarily miss the game; we miss the stimulation, the experience.  

  We miss seeing the heat of our breath leaving our mouths as we wait in the biting cold to see if our boys got that pivotal first down.

  We miss the smell of beer and hotdogs that permeate through the open winter air.

  We miss the the shaking of our bones above the thunderous rumbling of the rafters as we, and 30,000 of our friends, rise to our feet as the long bomb connects to put one in the win column in overtime.

  By trading experience for convenience, our memory, and memories, atrophy.

  Furthermore, what good does reaching the Pro level for tennis in Wii Sports do when we pull our withering hamstrings trying to get up to change the batteries on the Wiimote?  Our bodies were made for moving, for doing.  When we don't use them to their fullest, our bones and muscles deteriorate and literally die before their time, before being fully realized.

  This is nearly the definition of "atrophy."

  In an another case, with games like Rock Band becoming as sophisticated as they are, I can promise you that if you can get five stars on the drums for "Tom Sawyer," you can most definitely "manage" on a real set.  And while Rock Band is plenty fun, and pretty useful at times, it just doesn't beat learning to play the real thing.  Learning how to play an instrument is one of the most enriching things one can ever do.  Not only is it a great stress reliever and a terrific way to make yourself instantly "cooler," but it challenges you.  It challenges  your discipline.  It challenges you to think of ways to articulate yourself in a given format.  It challenges you to not merely mimic, but to create something new, something beautiful.

  When we stop challenging ourselves to think creatively, to look for new answers to old questions, we let our minds atrophy.

  Sometimes, getting shot down is exactly what you need.  Sometimes, a conversational or otherwise interpersonal public gaffe is exactly what you need.  Either way, regardless of success,  in-person, human contact is incredibly vital to effective communication.  It is in-person that we truly learn how to communicate with one another.  

  In-person, we learn about body language.

  In-person, we learn about dynamics.

  In-person, we learn about timing.

  In-person, we learn about nuance.

  In-person, we learn firsthand, good or bad, how our words and actions affect others.

  There is so much about the art of communication that simply cannot be expressed through text messages and emoticons; and the more separation there is between our messages and our meanings, the greater the consequence and the less power those meanings begin to have.

  The less time we actually spend with people, the less we understand how to properly respond to them, and they to us.  Without that in-person interaction, our sensibility, sensitivity, and rhetoric begin to atrophy.

  Convenience and safety come at a price- our work ethic, discipline, and sense of personal responsibility- and at an interest rate none of us can afford.

  More than that, the more we allow technology to allow us to "take it easy," or "take the guess work out," or anything along those lines, the more we atrophy as a whole, the more we deteriorate as a whole.

  Instead of spending so much time, energy, and money into making fake things "real," why not use those resources to make real things realized?