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A Tome of Forbidden Technologies

ecosophia.net

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Re: A Tome of Forbidden Technologies

#3

The discourse is nuanced, but isn't CD standard sampling rate greater than anything that's obtainable in practice with vynil?

Well, vinyl records are an analog medium so their sampling rate is infinite. More important would be physical and electrical band limits of the original recording, cutting and pressing devices and of course the playback devices.

Re: A Tome of Forbidden Technologies

#6
> The mere facts that these days, each new round of gimmickry that gets the prized label “progress” tends to generate more downsides than upsides, and that the shining future paradise has been getting visibly further off for decades, has barely begun to dent that touching and childlike faith.

Many of us are alive solely because of technologies developed in the last 20-30 years, and (I at least) find such objectively false claims actually personally offensive.

If you think deepfakes and algorithmic social media are the main recent outcomes of technological progress, you’re simply not paying attention. Did we forget about cheap solar? LiFePo4 battery technology? Monoclonal antibodies? 4nm process node chips?

Like, wtf?

Re: A Tome of Forbidden Technologies

#7
> Record companies accordingly used sampling rates just dense enough to keep most listeners from complaining, and called it good. It was good for their profits, sure, but it made the music sound flat and tinny.

Were there CDs with lower sampling rates than the standard 44.1kHz? I could understand complaining about low quality DACs or something, but if 44kHz is not enough for you then you're either a child or a bat.

Re: A Tome of Forbidden Technologies

#8

I quit reading at homeopathic medicine.

I genuinely think that was the worst example he could have possibly used. There might be something to electro-gardening, and everybody will agree that a tractor doesn't need to be a computer, but homeopathy just sells the placebo effect. There's no remotely plausible physical mechanism behind it. Makes everything else he's suggesting seem suspect, IMO.
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