[ARSCLIST] Discographies

[Karl Miller <karl.miller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

***There will come a day, if it hasn't already, that a
musician's
 entire recorded career will have existed in
electronic format only, never having released a single
track in actual real physical format.  How do you
write a discography for this musician so that it will
be even somewhat meaningful 75 years from today?

I believe we are just beginning to understand the
ramifications of an informational environment without
objects.  Even before "digital born" and mass
digitization projects, the quantity of information
being created far exceeded our ability to "control"
it. What is it like when everyone with an internet
connection and computer becomes a publisher? Perhaps
we can "control" the course of a river, but I doubt it
will ever be within our abilities as a species to
"control" the flow of the oceans...or the planets. We
haven't adequately dealt with the preservation of
paper or all of the extant lacquer discs or the
information they contain. We don't even have an
economically viable long-term solution for the
preservation of digital information. .

What I find even more curious is the notion of how
many people will indeed care about a musician who died
75 years ago. It isn't a question of the quality of
what they contributed, but rather a question of the
value ($) society places on their contributions. One
could argue that if their contribution was (is)
"meaningful" it will still be available digitally.

Karl