old media

Last night we Bogliasco Fellows had the pleasure to attend a concert by a former fellow, the composer and pianist Robert Levin. He played the exact same two sonatas by Beethoven on the fortepiano and then on the pianoforte, the latter being the huge grand piano on which modern audiences have heard Beethoven played many times. Beethoven was not Beethoven on the fortepiano for which he composed. Hmmm . . . was McLuhan really right in that technodeterminism, that the medium is the message? (Short answer: no, but, well, let's think about it).

 

Why is NPR thriving while PBS loses more of its viewers every year? 

At our recent seminar on Anne Allison's brilliant book Millenial Monsters, an ethnography of the global interest in Japanese toys (and much much more), one of the panelists, Larry Grossberg, one of the founders of Cultural Studies, was reflecting on the rapidity with which people are willing to pronounce on "the new" and "the old." He was referring to "new media" and the many comments one reads about the catastrophic social effects wrought by new technologies, the disruptions in social life as we know it, and so forth.