Glenn Gould glimpsing the future

Brian Lamb posts this great, prophetic quote by Glenn Gould, about collaborative digital media in 1964:

Electronic transmission has already inspired a new concept of multiple-authorship responsibility in which the specific concepts of the composer, the performer, and, indeed, the consumer overlap. ...It will not, it seems to me, be very much longer before a more self-assertive streak is detected in the listeners participation, before, to give but one example, "do-it-yourself" tape editing is the prerogative of every reasonably conscientious consumer of recorded music (the Hausmusik activity of the future, perhaps!). And I would be most surprised if the consumer involvement were to terminate at that level. In fact, implicit in electronic culture is an acceptance of the idea of multilevel participation in the creative process.

Comments

[Ronnie]

Way cool. And I thought Glenn was just a JS Bach geek...

[Andrew Pass]

Very neat. As educators I think we should ask our students to predict what people will be able to do with technology fifty years into the future. If nothing else, this question promotes creativity. Hold on to the stuff you get from students, it might just turn out to be correct.

[Gardner]

Gould's a genius. That said, no one escapes irony, and Gould's version is that his own authority as a peerless interpreter of Bach has only grown in esteem and force since his death.

I continue to insist that we're looking at a paradoxical both/and (and it's good thing, too): multilevel participation in the creative process newly empowers both individual creators and the collaborative. The one and the many.