I choose Deborah’s post as I appreciated her thoughtful choice selection in her Golden Record. We approached this task similarly, but concluded with a different curated list. Deborah’s choices were based on matching the progression of the music with the progression of man and civilization through it’s music within an evolutionary frame; a very different way of compiling than I ever considered (but appreciated nonetheless).
You can find Deborah’s post here:
I also appreciated Deborah’s questioning of whether the intergalactic society would understand the context of each song? Like Deborah, I delved deeper into the meaning of each song in order to understand and represent better. Deborah demonstrated this thoughtful reflection of each song. However, she furthered her context by the order in which songs occurred within her curated list.
Smith (1999) suggested that the preservation of materials could result in irreversible losses of information, and that all recorded information has value “or it would not have been recorded to begin with”. Although Deborah curated a different list than I did, we both struggled with the idea of representation. Both of us wanted to represent the world and wanted to do so through the meaning both musically, vocally and culturally within each song.
In Deborah’s final thoughts, it seems as though she also struggled with the idea of making a choice as she questions what is lost through the choice we make. This assignment is evident of the “power relations and struggles among identifiable class, race, gender, and religious groups” as described by Apple (1988). How would this record of been curated differently from Master level students from different parts of the world? From factory workers in India? From doctors in Kenya? From school-aged students in a rural province in China? How would First Nations from Canada or the USA choose a record to represent the human race? Is there a possible way for a group to choose songs that truly represents us as a human race. I don’t think so. The group chosen to curate this list would further the power that Apple (1988) describes. I suppose any lifeforms who discover the Golden Record should treat it as a cherry on top of a cupcake; taste it, appreciate it, but should come back to enjoy the entirety of it.
References
Apple, M. W. (1988). Redefining equality: Authoritarian populism and the conservative restoration. Teachers College Record, 90(2), 167-184.
Smith Rumsey, A. (1999, February). Why digitize? Council on Library and Information Resources. Retrieved August 12, 2022.