This week we’re all supposed to analyze the data collected from everyone’s choices for the curation of the Golden Record in Task 8.
Here’s the clusterfudge that we were dealt:
If I click on modularity 4, it appears that I am grouped with Ying Gu (can’t find a webspace link) and Megan Cleaveley. (I will analyze this more in the linking assignment.)
I though there would be a lot more commonalities seeing as there were only 27 songs to choose from. Even with only 3 of us, there are 16 songs and each of us only has 10. Ones that we had in common are:
1. Track 6: El Cascabel
2. Track 7: Johnny B. Goode
3. Track 19: Iziel je Delyo Hagdutin
4. Track 21: Fairie Round
This small subset of common tracks got me wondering if there was any one track that everyone in the class had in common. (Spoiler: there isn’t!) I did find that Track 7: Johnny B. Goode was found in every modularity class though, which leads me to believe that almost everyone in the class found this song was culturally significant enough that it should be preserved through time and space and sent off to unknown aliens in a far away land. I myself had this on my list! But, I don’t actually think the song is that important. It’s just not. It does ring of nostalgic 1950’s Americana which seems to be painted as this idillic time period where people were truly living the American Dream; something that Americans seem to think the entire world strives to be. (Sorry America, they don’t!)
I found this excellent video with Bill Nye from the United Nations talking about the Golden Record and it really showed how ridiculous the whole thing is.
Chances are, no alien will find and decipher the record let alone figure out how the map works and contact us. The whole exercise is a power move to show that we can do this, but also a strange exercise in how NASA, an American organization. views what is, and isn’t important on a global scale. It is impossible to capture the entire world and the history of mankind on one disk. How would the record have differed if, say Japan made the list instead. It’s bizarre that the intro message, from the secretary-general of the UN is in English. The official language if the UN is, after all, French!
I don’t think that the Golden Record was useless. It’s still a very interesting and historic piece of music and technology.