"But we can't take such freshness for granted. Musical technology is so ever-present in our culture, and we are all so very aware of it, that techno-clichés and techno-banalities are never far away and have become ever more difficult to identify and root out. It is deceptively challenging these days to apply technology to music in ways that explode our imaginations, deepen our personal insights, shake us out of boring routine and accepted belief, and pull us ever closer to one another.
That's what makes this kind of work worthwhile and inspires me. But it also leads to a paradox that I experience every single day: that the desire to shape the future is not perfectly compatible with the knowledge that musical experience -- and its power to excite and transform us -- is fleeting, here and now, in this very moment. And that we'd be extremely fortunate indeed to create new sounds and instruments and technologies that approach the compact, powerful perfection of playing, listening to or imagining Bach emanating from a solo cello.
So what do you think? Can music made by technological processes ever match the beauty and impact of a skilled performance on a traditional instrument? Will an iPhone or its descendents allow us to enhance our musical imaginations while merging with our bodies, becoming -- literally -- second nature as we create and communicate our deepest thoughts and feelings through sound?"
As an old fogey, I have to think what has happened to music accompanied by technological advances is the dimunition of music as a valuable entity. As the author states music is all around us at this time and we continue to make music more accessible more of the time without regard for making it more than just passing background noise that is to be "defriended" as the memory stick requires more file space. A lost manuscript from Bach is news, the deletion of a file by an unknown is no big deal. As music becomes a commodity we have less value in its special }presence and it moves more and more toward being wallpaper just as pop up ads become annoying little items to filter from sight.