Edison's magic plastic

Sunday January 22, 2006 - 2:15AM EDT

I still find it painfully annoying this weird obsession with vinyl records some people have. I also find it equally as annyoing that some clowns think the sound quality of vinyl is better because it is an analog source. Its comical and it proves how little these clowns know about the science of recording technology. Side note, it is about time they came up with a touchpad turn table for these mixing DJs. Actuallly maybe they do have something like that. If I can spin the dial on my ipod with a strain gage then they can do it with a turntable. In fact it might be pretty cool for them to come up with algorithms to translate different hand sliding into sounds that could never be produced on a vinyl turntable. Anyway, where was I. Oh yes, science of recording technology. I guess people don't realize that just because it is analog doesn't mean it is better than digital. I wonder if they have any idea of what the first analog recordings sounded like. Like garbage.  The fact that it was analog didn't make it a superior quality. I wonder if those that believe so much in the quality of analog have any idea of the variations that can be introduced into an analog signal from outside influences.  Funny thing is that when they make vinyl recordings today I can gaurantee you they use digital technology to compensate for the inheirent defecienes in analog signal recording.

Watching that documentary on Edison a while ago really made me think about recording and today's hub-bub over them. It is sort of comforting to think that there wasn't a thing called recording before Edison and his contemporaries came up with it. Makes me more confidant that the current conflicts will be overcome amicably, eventually. I also think about Guttenburgs printing press and how it is often cited as a civilization changing invention. I never really paid much attention to that statement until recently. Speaking of the printing press I heard once somewhere that a similar invention was created before Guttenburg came up with it. Even so his was the one that changed the world.

Computer memory is another one of those world changing technologies. The computer in itself but I'd like to seperate out computer memory, computational ability aside for a second. What an invention. It is really what all this conflict is about. Persistent ultra-portable knowledge.

Germ theory. Another awesome advancement. That people didn't know there were tiny micro-organisms that made us ill seems ludicrous now.