I was impressed with Nick’s list because he broke it down by region and it was easy to see that his goal was to represent as many different musical traditions and cultures as possible. At the same time, I feel curation comes from a place of expertise. I’m not a music expert, but I am an expert on my own experiences. If extra-terrestrials have a genuine interest in understanding humans, they would look through the top 10 lists of not just one person, but many and compare them. The enormity of digital information available and the impossibility to archive them all means the information out there is more than what one human life can consume. To make sure these archives are not lost, information should be presented to create curiosity and encourage further reading, like the opinion pages of a newspaper.
Right now the job of archiving online data and information resides in the hands of a few. What criteria do they use to determine what is valuable enough to archive? Could technology and algorithms help archivists archive more online texts?
Below I’ve posted my comment on Nick’s T8 task.
Hi Nick,
I took a different approach from you. While originally I tried to be objective, I ended up choosing tracks based on my own prior background. For example, originally I wanted to talk about how the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are described as fate knocking, but a quick Wikipedia search showed me how that might not have been Beethoven’s intention at all, and that it was more likely mimicking a yellow-hammer bird’s song. I was torn between which description to choose, the one most popularly believed or the one described as most likely to be true. Sometimes I find it hard to not be subjective. I think if I were to redo this activity, I would make two Top 10 lists, one based on my own preferences and one where I do my best to be objective to see how much or little overlap there is.