What will we leave behind?

It has been about ten years since I first embraced the Internet and the personal computer. I had dabbled with the technology before this, but it was still to buggy for me. What I wanted to do with the new world of technology was still a little out of reach. Inevitably I would put a demand on the software I was using and it would crash. Many hours were spent learning the importance of saving your work. If I was on the early internet, I would spend many hours waiting for a page to load. Once it appeared it was fairly limited in useful information. My imagination saw a future for these tools, but as a musician I needed them to be further developed.

The late nineties brought faster machines. Jen and I had a P3 that I recently retired. I began using it for music production. Mostly post production work as the software and memory was still to slow for my demands in multi track recording. I had the most success using SoundForge for post editing and "mastering" my mixes from my multi track recorder.

The internet, once used only for email distribution of upcoming shows became relevant in a much bolder way. In 1999 I found a site called mp3.com. This site enabled me to create a true web presence. I was able to offer music to listeners around the world. I was able to create on demand CD distribution. I had a place to offer information on my upcoming shows. I was finally able to bypass the record companies and move forward with my music. MP3.com paid us for the downloads and the musicians promoted the site. As independent musicians we were very enthusiastic about what mp3.com offered and worked hard for it. We were well paid and the future was exciting.

MP3.com was pioneering the way music would be distributed. They were taking the industry into the future with unabashed ambition. Ultimatly the recording industry (RIAA) filed lawsuits to prevent mp3.com from offering online personal music storage. This and the old Napster lawsuits filed by the RIAA began defining how music could legally be distributed online. MP3.com lost the lawsuits and were ultimately bought and shut down by NBC/Universal. The artists were all offered CNET space. No website since has offered as good an opportunity to indie musicians.

Since that time I have used many music hosting sites. Myspace has the biggest visiter community. CreateSpace offers the best on demand CD pressing. Integrating the two has been completely up to me. Offering an online music player in my integrated website forces me to use another site. To offer unlimited free downloads, I have had to create that from scratch using html. As a result, my desire to make and distribute music has taken my skill set from musician to web designer. Today my folk music world is here on the internet.

Folk Arts are defined by some, as a mediums that originate amongst the common people of a region and passed through the people.

What we were doing ten years ago on mp3.com was a new kind of folk art. We were sharing our music around a campfire called the Internet in a region called the the world wide web. This style of sharing, is of course not limited to just music. We all find ourselves participating in the world of blogging. We are sharing our lives and stories. We are creating an account of world history unlike any the world has ever known. The folk tradition is alive here in the bloggasphere. Our stories are being told. Some true, some exaggerations, some are pure lies. But it is all being accounted for.

Centuries from now our lives will be remembered in greater definition then was available ten years ago. Our decedents will be able to get to know us in very intimate ways. As bloggers we are recording history. Every little detail of our lives will be relevant in future attempts to see and understand who we were as a world in 2008. If humanity survives into the next millennium, it will be our stories that will help future generations to understand why they live the way they do.

I do not believe our human future will be an earthly one. I honestly think if we are to continue at our current growth, that we can not do it here any longer. Earth will be home to some for agriculture, but we most likely will have to expand our world into space. What we write here in blog land may be some of the last accounts of what life was like when so many lived here on earth.

I hope we can leave more then a digital memory.