There is a really interesting article in  the Arts section of this morning's (Thursday March 27) New York Times about newly uncovered research that challenges the belief that Thomas Edison was the father of recorded sound.  This new research claims that even before Edison had recorded his first sounds a French man named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded a ten second sound bite of a female vocalist singing a French folk song (Au Clair de la Lune) back in 1860.  However it was not recorded onto a record but rather on a "phonautograph" or  "phonautogram" (as seen in photo left) which was in turn recently made playable - by converting the written images on the paper into sound - by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Library.  If you click on the NYTimes story not only can you read about this amazing discovery in detail but they also have an MP3 sound file of this historic 10-second 1860 recording.
                                                                                                                                                                                                 
When you stop and think about it, it is truly amazing how far we have come in the advancement of  music recording and playback in the short time span (relatively in the history of mankind) since Thomas Edison (pictured right) first invented the phonograph in 1877 and unveiled it a year later to an amazed public.

Every since laptops as a live music source for artists, especially DJs, became ubiquitous on the club & concert scene in recent years the question continually arises: are they actually creating live music up there on stage or merely  checking their e-mails as a pre-programmed music mix plays?

In some cases the "artist" may be just checking his/her emails or updating their Facebook account but most real artists are utilizing their laptops' numerous programs in creative musical ways.

And in increasingly common cases there are more than one laptop musicians in action. The Bay Area quartet Cat Five (featured on Independent Sounds: Amoeba Music Compilation Vol III), formed by Balanceman and Darkat almost a decade ago, is an example of a laptop group. With their preference being Apple computers all four would construct freeform live compositions.

And taking it to the next level is the Worldscape Laptop Orchestra (pictured left) - a fifty person laptop musician collective who a couple of months ago put on an orchestrated, fully rehearsed all laptop  performance at Britain's University of York led by composer Dr Ambrose Field who acted as the performance's conductor (just like in a traditional full orchestra) whose goal, he said, is to help pave the way in music for "larger all-digital ensembles."

The Worldscape Laptop Orchestra's 50 performers each worked exclusively with Apple laptops (their sponsor) as their instrument with custom software that was produced to enable wireless communication with each computer sharing audio and control data. The full range of software functionality used in the performance included video detection where hand movements of performers were decoded by the MacBooks.

If you are like most people odds are that your old cell phone or old phones are sitting gathering dust in a drawer or box at your home. 

Maybe you believe that you might actually use that outdated but technically still-functional old Nokia one day again. Or maybe you never got around to transferring all the old phone numbers. Or perhaps it holds a certain sentimental value and you just can't seem to part with it.

 Almost statistically as likely are the odds that you also still have an old PC or laptop sitting around the house (or garage or storage unit) as well, even though you won't be using that anymore either.  Add up all of these obsolete electronic components in every household and you have a lot of future e-waste - something that is already a serious problem with chronic potential on global scale.

Old unused cell phones, obsolete computers, cameras, old TVs, and various other assorted outdated  or busted electronic units and parts are all part of the mounting global e-waste problem since they eventually will be dumped. And e-waste, like global warming, is a very serious pending problem for the earth and its inhabitants.

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) estimates that there are approximately 500 million obsolete computers with millions and millions of unwanted cell phones being retired annually.   Even by 2005 the United States Geological Survey estimated that there were already half a billion old unused phones in the US. In total the USA owns approximately 3 billion electronic products with approximately 2.2 billion tons becoming e-waste annually.   And most of this e-waste gets shipped to poorer countries like China, India, and Nigeria.

The problem with e-waste such as old electronics like computers and cell phones is that they are highly toxic - made out of metals and plastics and other non-biodegradable components that are complex and hence expensive to separate. Old computers are loaded with hazardous chemicals. Mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, cobalt, zinc, chromium are among some of the toxic materials found in your average PC.  And when they are dumped improperly (which is usually the case) these chemicals seep into the environment or are dumped into rivers, or more immediately poison the poor workers in third world countries who, to eek out a measly living, are contaminated by the toxins and lack of protection in their working conditions.
 
So what do we do? How and where do we get rid of our e-waste? For starters, environmentalists suggest, try not to keep buying new electronic items when you really don't need them.  And then when you are finished with them, dispose of them immediately and correctly. 

As reported recently by the ever insightful  Pew Internet & American Life Project who are constantly doing studies and surveys on the online activity of all age, economic, and societal groups - an estimated 64% of those ages 12 to 17 have created some form of online content - which is much more than adults have.  For example when it comes to creating a blog, only an estimated 8% of adults have created one while 28% of teens have created a blog. 

And as more and more individuals, especially younger, get wired in 2008 this figure will undoubtedly go up. And regarding the gender breakdown of this teen online activity the Pew Project has determined that teenage girls are much more likely than boys to create blogs, post items online,  or to have joined a social networking group like Facebook.

Speaking of Facebook the word "facebook" (as a verb) came in second place in 2007, behind the online gaming word "w00t" as examples of  technology-based words that have been appearing quite often in Merriam-Webster's annual "word of the year" list (see Whitmore's AMOEBLOG from recently for more on this topic) in which "blog" was the word of the year in 2004 while "google" (as in the verb to google) came in second place in 2006. 

And speaking of  "to google" in the Pew Internet Project's recent "Digital Footprints"  report they have determined that people searching for information about themselves online (googling their own name) has increased dramatically over the past five years from 22% to 47%. The same study also reports that  74% of those who google themselves have only checked their search results once or twice.

In the weeks leading up to the debut last night (Jan 13th)  of
 the new Fox TV show "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"  much of its national outdoor advertising campaign (bus-stop and billboard posters) featured the poster shown left of the show's attractive actress Summer Glau who plays the half-woman/half-robot terminator unit Cameron Phillips sent to protect John Connor - Sarah's son.

No doubt this image of a sexy woman who is really a robot will fuel discussion or at least fantasies (especially with lusty hetero males) on the popular, recurring Sci-Fi theme of the possibility of humans having relationships with human-like robots.

 But really,  just how likely is a time when humans will have sexual or loving relationships with lifelike female, male, or transgender robots?  Well according to David Levy, an expert in robots and artificial intelligence, a time when humans will routinely be having sex with robots is actually only about forty years into the future.

Levy,  author of "Robots Unlimited" that was published in 2005 and more recently the provocative book "Love + Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships" which was just  published by Harper Collins, asserts that such technological advances are just around the corner and that they will be not considered weird but, he believes,  generally be very warmly accepted.

If he is right by the year 2048 companies like Apple or Microsoft will be releasing some new interactive, fully functional lifelike robots.  And you thought the new iPhone or the latest Xbox created a buzz!. Wait 'til the new seXbox or the new iSexbot hit the marketplace!  Can you imagine the lines? The pre-orders!