SIGNALS

Was it the carbonara? I wolfed down that big bowl of “coal miner’s spaghetti” but did the pork seem just slightly off? In any case, something sure made me drowsy, and now it feels like I slept forever. Did I pull a Rip Van Winkle and awaken years later? Or am I still asleep and this is all just a dream? Either way, here I am with the reincarnated Sound & Vision magazine in my hands. It’s the October/November issue. October/November 2124, that is.

Wow! The future! But some things haven’t changed. For starters, fierce debates still rage in the audio/video community. Remember vacuum tubes versus solid state? VHS versus Betamax? CRT versus LCD? The analog versus digital brouhaha? Well, now we have a new squabble on our hands - the question of ears/eyes/brain. Allow me to explain.

Alert readers will recall that in 2024, researchers demonstrated that a neural implant could enable direct communication between the human brain and the outside world. For example, subjects could control a cursor on a computer screen simply by using their thoughts. Subsequent development expanded the applications. Soon, literally, the blind could see and the deaf could hear.

By the turn of the 22nd century, thanks to the brain-implant kiosks conveniently located in every Costco, almost everyone has a neural implant, facilitating and improving on their interactions with the world around them. For example, most readers don’t actually “read” this 2124 issue of Sound & Vision. Rather, the magazine’s content is simply flashed into their brains, and – presto! That’s a real advantage over the tedious page-turning and screen-swiping of yesteryear. Good riddance. It’s as if we’re all waking up from a bad dream. But I digress.

The important matter at hand is the latest audiophile/videophile kerfuffle.
One camp, the Luddites, prefers to listen to music and watch television using their ears and eyes – you know, the old-fashioned way. And, I should hasten to add that a century of advancement has made audio transducers and video displays pretty darn good – a far cry from the junk they foisted on us in 2024.

The opposing camp, the Brainiacs, prefers to be entertained via their implants. It obviates the need for bulky hardware like loudspeakers and televisions because it’s a direct source-to-brain link. You know how headphones give you that “music inside my head” feeling? This is the same, but minus the headphones, and the ears. More important is the stupendously good sound and video quality.

Let’s face it, our ears and eyes have limitations. We’re not all blessed with hear-a-pin-drop hearing, and 20/20 fighter-pilot vision. Throw in unfortunate genetic oopsies like color blindness (particularly common in males) and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, that is, the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, start to add up. And, let’s concede that our hearing and vision don’t exactly improve with age.

A source-to-brain pathway bypasses those troublesome flesh and blood organs and mainlines the good stuff right into the ole noggin. Even if you are young and blessed with pin-drop hearing and fighter-pilot vision, this is far, far better – delivering the highest possible fidelity and acuity that your brain can process. The improvement in the things you hear and see is mind blowing.

Surprisingly, in 2124, some people still insist on using their ears and eyes. Why? For the same reason that some old timers prefer driving their cars instead of having their cars drive them. And a few fossils even prefer to manually shift their own gears instead of having the transmission shift for them. And, in the same way that 19th century textile workers raged against industrialization, sabotaging or destroying automated machinery, this ears/eyes/brain clash can get pretty intense. Well, not as bad as the LP versus CD bloodbath, but still pretty bad.

The debate boils down to a purity test. A live performance of a symphony orchestra in a concert hall is a pure experience. But my cheap seat, poor hall acoustics, or plugged ears limit the experience. A technically excellent recording played over a good sound system might improve things. But a direct-to-brain experience, although the least pure, provides quality that far surpasses the other two. So what do you want? Purity or quality?

Of course, this ears/eyes/brain question pulls us right down the rabbit hole. The information conveyed through sound and light waves only becomes consequential when reconstituted as brain waves. The sound from a loudspeaker, the light from a television – those are just stimulation for a synaptic illusion, a gray-matter parlor trick. We can hear a song through our ears, “hear” it as a memory, and even “hear” it in our dreams. We differentiate between those versions, but is there any real difference? The only thing that matters is what’s inside our heads. Let’s face it – this whole audio/video thing, this whole Sound & Vision thing – is just a comfy chair in the home theater of the mind.

While you ponder that soliloquy, I’ll let this monthly column shuffle off this mortal coil. But before I go, I’ll let you in on a secret. Occasionally, I would finish writing a column and pat myself on the back, thinking – that’s a pretty decent bit of wordsmithing. As for most other columns – well, they can’t all be Shakespeare.