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Opinion
Low Tech, High Tech: An Old Convertible and a New Playlist Functionality
9/13/2006
Bob Marley and, of course, the play list generated was Reggae tunes. I had hoped to see Sinead O’Connor on the list but was instead shocked to see Willie Nelson listed near the top of the list. Most of us in the room said in unison, “Willie Nelson?” Sure enough, we clicked on the tune and listed to a sample and it was one of his own tunes set to Reggae. And when we clicked further, we found that it was part of an entire album: Countryman. We refreshed the play list several times but Sinead never showed up, to my disappointment because Throw Down Your Arms is one of my favorite albums.
Now, the mystery: Another feature of Tapestry™ lets the user select key terms and phrases, AMG calls them “styles, tones, themes, instruments, production elements and structural attributes.” So, if you click on “Party/Celebration” and “Late Night,” you would probably expect to eventually run across Gloria.
I was intrigued by the terms “Sarcastic,” “Melancholy,” and “Feelin’ Low,” so I asked our guide to click on those in various combinations, fully expecting to see my favorite artists, Leonard Cohen show up. But no matter how we combined them, none of his tunes were there.
How Cohen could not possibly show up with those terms is beyond my understanding. It remains a mystery, but it didn’t keep me from listening to Cohen as I wrote this piece.
I quite like this use of technology but without trying to use the technology to replace human expertise. One of my SCUP colleagues, Sunny Beach, is working toward a Masters in Information at the University of Michigan. His class project this fall for one of his classes is going to look at using technology in sort of this way, to use the technology to make more accessible human brain-powered planning expertise. I hope others are working on similar projects.
Kind of reminds me of one of my favorite sayings when embarking on a new project, “The technology is the easy part.” It’s the people part that is hardest, and which offers the most meaning.
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