On February 12, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed the idea of how technology has contributed in the disintegration and disaggregation of information.  To summarize, how do we, as people, distinguish signals from noise?  Typically speaking, signals are sounds that you want to hear while noises are basically everything else that isn’t the intended signal.  This is made clear every time we use a phone.  The signal is the voice on the other end that we’re trying to focus on while the noise is the electrical hum, static, crackle, bugging, and the general deterioration of the signal as it traveled from one end to the other.  The further the signal had to travel, the worse these problems and noises got, which begged the question of how we could keep the signal strong without losing any of it.  The telephone’s way of attempting to remediate most of this was to use a system where, once the phone heard the sound that it was supposed to focus on (the signal), it would send an electrical current to the other end, which would then activate vibrations that would successfully send the signal in a way that can clearly be heard.  This is technically the first instance of disaggregating information, as the information that the person on one end is trying to convey to the other person on the other is being reduced to mere instances of vibrations.  Another big example of the disaggregation of information was when Claude Shannon, a mathematician, helped bring about ideas that would eventually be the very groundwork for most, if all, computer programs today.  He brought up the concept of Boolean algebra, a type of algebra that basically simplified everything to a yes or no answer.  Shannon realized that, when one really thought about it, all questions in the world could be answered by either answering yes or no.  This became the backbone to many computer programs in the near future.  When you want to send something to someone else, instead of actually delivering and transmitting that message, the message is instead scanned over and copied and filled in on the other end.  For example, if I were to send a painting electronically to someone, their computer would then scan to see if the color black was used within the picture, and if it did, then it would hit “yes” and fill in that exact same space on its own.  The process is then repeated with other colors until the painting on my friend’s computer is the exact same as the painting I had intended to send him.  Basically, the computer had turned the painting that I was planning to send to my friend into bits of information, which were then sent to his computer.  The computers, in other words, disaggregated the information.

One of the biggest questions presented during this lecture was whether the disaggregation of information cheapens the very information, message, or meaning behind it in the first place.  Regarding the previous examples, hearing a message through the phone may take away from it, at least if you compare it to possibly hearing it face to face.  Which is more powerful: hearing that your father is dead from your mother who is standing sadly in front of you or hearing it from the other end of a phone?  Same goes for the sending of pictures and paintings through the Internet.  If you can see the same things that your friends have seen simply because your friends sent you the pictures that they took when they went out to experience it for themselves, did you truly see what they saw?  Has the experience now been lost on you?  To further help us understand this argument, our professor used GarageBand to show us a couple of songs he had made beforehand, some of the music using sound clips from singers who no doubt took time out of their probably busy lives to get up and record some clips for the program and some instruments that were probably being played by professional musicians who have spent years and years perfecting their craft.  All of these sounds and singers probably had backstories to them and yet here they were, on a music making program being reduced to being disconnected clips to be used for its ignorant user’s pleasure and enjoyment.  In regards to this issue, I will agree that there is certainly something being lost here, but I will also point out that in return, these pieces of information are far more accessible than they used to be, creating possible new experiences that would’ve been impossible to make beforehand.  That seems to be the general give and take with technology.  It makes things more accessible while also cheapening the real thing in the process.  On the other hand, if you want to see the real thing, it will no doubt be less accessible, but you’ll be experiencing what it was meant for you to experience in the first place.  It all comes down to what you care most about and if you are willing to go out of your way to truly experience it or not.