In Defense of Starship

Rolling Stone recently released a list of the ten worst hits of the 80s, and, once again, “We Built this City” took the top spot.

This annoys me.

Not because it’s the best song ever – it’s a fluffy little Pop tune, c’mon – but because it’s just another rehash of a 2004 list that defunct Blender Magazine threw together with no real criteria. It basically amounted to an editor asking folks “What songs annoy you?”, and then sorting the list based on how much he agreed with the answers.

A fun thing to do is to go through someone’s iPod and try and figure out what songs are on there ironically (unless it’s a Hipster’s mix tape, then they all are). I have “We Built this City” on my player, and it’s not ironic at all. I like the thing. It’s the typical lament of teenagers about being misunderstood and marginalized by the older generations, set to a catchy rhythm. To me, the whole thing is a complaint that the creative energy that fuels the younger generations is also the source of the innovation and advancement which “built this city”, but that it has been co-opted and exploited by the more conservative, faceless corporate community. And I think that no line – in this or any other song – better illustrates that than:

“Marconi plays the mambo”

I remember when I first heard the song; I was absolutely stunned by that implications of that line. That this 21-year-old Italian kid created a revolutionary, world-changing technology – just so he could dance.

I was fifteen, smack in the middle of my formative years, and that idea sparked a lifelong fascination with the intersection of Pop Culture and technology. I chased down bands that were integrating electronics into their styles (very easy to find in the 80s), sought out cutting edge fiction (leading to Cyberpunk, naturally), and read magazines like MONDO 2000 (when I could find them). Now, sites like Acceler8or, ThinkGeek, BoingBoing, and Wired are the windows through which we can watch the integration of technology and humanity. The question is: Are we, as people, becoming more machinelike? Or is the tech becoming more organic?

Both.

Scientists are even now experimenting with a fungus that changes colors as the basis of a memory-storage system, and thousands upon thousands of people are walking around with pacemakers or artificial limbs. I refer to my smart phone as my external brain – and I’m only half-kidding. You can get your pets (or your kids!) chipped so you can GPS them if they get lost, and Japan has built robots that acquire knowledge like children, learning from mistakes. Then there's this bit from today: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11283/1181062-53.stm

Conventional wisdom holds that porn is the driving force behind all technological leaps. As a species, we really like it, and are constantly looking for ways to deliver it faster and more realistically. The first fully-functional neural net/Waldo suit will be a sex toy, delivering perfect partners in perfect environments with perfect results every time.

The second one will be for dancing.