Jordon Lovig ETEC 540

I ran into an obstacle with this class right from the get go. Unfortunately the Palladio app didn’t work properly with my operating system. I wasn’t able to upload the .json file and therefore, was not able to access the data on my own. Thankfully our course instructor made himself available to assist me. We met on a Zoom call and over the course of about half an hour we worked through the data together.

Watching him manipulate the data points across the various groups of students, something became very clear almost immediately: there was a selection of three songs which were present in each group’s selections, and nearly every single student included these songs on their curated list of selections from the Golden Record.

The songs are:

1. Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven (Tack 14)
2. Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. (Track 18)
3. “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry. (Track 7)

While I did find it interesting that these three tracks were so ubiquitous among those selected, I can’t say I’m particularly surprised. While our class includes students from a variety of cultural backgrounds, it is a class taught in English at a prominent western institution. As such, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that most students in the class have had some exposure to western arts and culture, particularly music and film. From there, it follows that these three tracks would be selected by most students, as they represent the three pieces (out of 27 total) which are most recognizable in western culture. Johnny B Goode is the template for modern rock and role, Beethoven’s 5^th is arguably the most recognizable piece in the western canon and Melancholy Blues, while perhaps not as well known, is sung in English and in a familiar style of music.

I consider myself a pretty big music fan, and to be honest, when I first listened to the original 27 tracks on the record, I was a bit perplexed by some of the choices. There were very few songs that I recognized and some just didn’t sound very musical to my ear at all. But after looking at the data, I feel I have a better understanding of why many of these tracks were selected. Music is a universal experience, but as this exercise shows, it’s very tuned to cultural experiences. I think it was important for NASA to ensure that the record encompassed as much of the human experience as possible, and simply choosing 27 rock, jazz, country or classical songs wouldn’t have accomplished that.

As a predominately western audience, our class selected the songs that resonated most with them. But we don’t know how this data would look if it included selections from a more diverse selection of humans, such as someone who doesn’t speak English, or someone who has never heard a song on a radio. Since the intended audience for the Golden Record is definitively not human, it makes sense to include selections from as many periods and cultures as possible.