Thanks to a plug from Justin, I got a gig blogging about MyStrands. Turns out, it’s not quite as simple as listening to tunes and typing. Before I explain the problems I having with that, I need to self-disclose my relation to music.
Me and My Music
I grew up in a Top 40 world in transition. WLS radio in Chicago was my mainstay, in the era when Uncle Lar and Li’l Snotnose Tommy played Dickie Goodman’s Mr. Jaws on the radio.
My first favorite song — Black Water by the Doobie Brothers — came out at the start of Disco but trailed a host of songs that included mellow offerings by Captain & Tenille (Love Will Keep Us Together), Elton John (Philadelphia Freedom), Barry Manilow (Mandy), Eagles (Best of My Love) and, of course, Olivia Newton-John’s “Have You Never Been Mellow”. Also in the top 10 that year, two iconic offerings: The start of disco, “That’s the Way (I Like It),” by K.C. & Sunshine Band; and Morris Albert’s “Feelings” … which will forever be tied to The Gong Show for an episode in which every act gave his own spin on the song, ruining Albert’s work forever. Clearly, popular songs were in decline. When Debbie Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” finished as the top song in the WLS New Year’s Countdown two years later (“Star Wars” was robbed, I tells ya!), I turned off the radio.
Unfortunately, while saving me from Saturday Night Fever overplay, that put me at the mercy of the family’s purchased collection. I was a big “Hooked on [Insert Genre Here]” fan in the early 1980s, allowing a tall stack of vinyl records to play me to sleep every night. Once married in the ’90s, my wife and I spent almost three years in the New Orleans area, where a healthy dose of WWOZ and Jazz Fest got me back on track.
I’m a product of the 8-track Tape Age, a technology in which my father proudly invested for the sound quality. Remembering the painful effects of that choice — there are only so many times one can listen to Rogers & Hammerstein compilations and enjoy the quality of the sound — I took the opportunity in college to avoid another technology, the compact disc.
I don’t own an iPod. I bought my wife a Sony device a year before Apple released their music stick, and wisely we figured Sony knows how to do music better than the computer company. I do use iTunes, but mostly as an electronic repository for the CDs I did accumulate over the years. I’ve still got my cassette tapes, still have my LPs and 45s. If pushed, I could still come up with an 8-track cassette or two. Music for me is a late-night companion for computer work, or a driving buddy for road trips.
Me and My Ignorance
For this crowd of MyStrands folk, I’m probably considered musically inept. I don’t think I could pick a Cold Play hit out of stack of techno-punk. Most of my musical urges are satisfied by finding something long-lost and familiar from my eclectic past. I can’t speak the language of my Gen X peers, let alone the generation casting their first votes and drinking their first beers (probably not in that order).
I’m being asked to explain (not review, not critique) MyStrand’s nifty tools, both the ones already available and the ones in development. It seemed straightforward enough. After playing with the toys, though, I imagine how different I am than most users of this product. I’m not in a position to buy the music, and the tools don’t integrate back to iTunes in the same way it draws info from that application. I’m not much on tagging, either. What’s left? The blog where my posts would go is read by people already through the basics and looking for cheats and tricks at a level I am nowhere near. At the moment, I am on the outside of this particular community of practice looking in.
Writing is easiest when the subject is well known. I don’t know music or these MyStrands tools well enough to feel I’m contributing anything useful to their publication. I feel constrained by that lack of understanding, and the absence of critique. I’d really like this tool to be able to respond to my interests, too, and allow me to prevent any Guns N’ Roses from appearing on my recommendation lists (networks be damned). The IU HCI program spends two years instilling that kind of constant questioning and reworking an idea, but this job doesn’t really have a place for that. So I feel like I’m looking at a big blank page I can’t fill.
This was a common feeling for me up through the first semseter of the program. It was difficult to break the habit of trying to know everything I could before speaking. Working with wikis, conducting design sessions, and living in environments that encourage open testing of ideas has done a lot to change those habits. I was suprised how quickly that was lost.
