The End of Domains

The digital age carries with it another disappointing and disruptive consequence.

If you something about music (I barely do) you’ll know that in Western music (I mean the Western emisphere, not cow boys) melodies are built upon notes which are conventionally named upon their distance from the “root “chord (the fondamentale). This interval is all for our ears, it’s what makes a “major third” sound glorious or happy (rhythm has another essential role) and a “minor third” sound sad and griefing.

Even if you don’t give a damn about music, and a “third” means something to you only in terms of bra sizes (in Italy at least), it’s easy to imagine what happens if you put a new bass line under the “root” bass of a melody, changing the pitch of the composition.

All relations change, and all intervals has to be redefined; to your ear, what was harmonic may sound weird, what was major may sound minor, and so on.

The advent of digital has been something like the introduction of a new bass line. All relations changed, something disappeared, something improved, something born from scratch, but almost nothing has (or will have) not to be redefined in relation to digital.

Old definitions don’t fit anymore, existing domains must be stretched or changed. So, for example, what was pervert stuff can be an industry (porn), what was born to sell can be used to learn (Amazon), what was built for fun can be a job (Facebook) and so on.

So, if you try, it’s more frequently easy to build a new definition or mashup existing when you have to define the domain of something,than to point precisely at a single field or category that defines a digital idea.