The basic idea here is that once you have
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2025 5:52 am
When the Internet Archive asked me to do a megamix of their archive of recordings from their data files, I was a bit overwhelmed. There’s no way any human being could comb through even the way they’ve documented just the web, let alone the material they have asked people to upload.Where to start? Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s speech inaugurating the internet back when he came up with the term the “Semantic Web?” The first recordings from Edison? That could be cool. Maybe mix that with GW Bush’s State of the Union speech inaugurating the invasion of Iraq? Why not. Take Hedy Lamar’s original blueprints for spread spectrum “secret communications systems” and mix that with recordings of William S. Burrough and Malcolm X, with a beat made from open source 1920’s jazz and 1950’s New Orleans blues? Why not. Grab some clips of Cory Doctorow talking about the upcoming war on open computing and mix it with Parliament Funkadelic? Sure. Take the first “sound heard around the world,” the telemetry signals guiding the Sputnik satellite as it swirled around planet Earth to become our first orbital artificial moon? Cool. Why not? Take a speech from Margaret Sanger, the woman who started Planned Parenthood, and mix it with Public Enemy? Cool. Take D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” and re-score it with the Quincy Jones theme from “Fat Albert?” That would actually be kind of cool, but would require a lot of editing.
the recordings and documentation of all aspects of human activity from the last several centuries, that is a serious “mega-mix.”
What you will hear in the short track I made is a mini reflection of the density of the sheer volume of materials that the Internet Archive has onsite. It is a humble reminder that through the computer, the telemarketing data network, and the wireless transmission of information, we have an immaculate reflection of what Alan Turing may have called “morphogenesis” — the human, all too human, attempt to corral the world into anthropocentric metaphors that seek to convey the sublime, the edge of human understanding: the emergent patterns that occur when you recombine material with unexpectedly powerful new connections.
I’m honored to be the first DJ to start. But I’m also honored that many, many more will follow. The Archive is a mirror of infinite recombinant potential. I hope that its gift of free culture and free exchange creates a place where we will be comfortable with what is almost impossible to guess comes next. It is not a “collaborative filter” but a place where you are invited to explore on your own and come up with new ways of seeing the infinite memory palace of the fragments of history, time, and space that make this modern 21st century world work.
the recordings and documentation of all aspects of human activity from the last several centuries, that is a serious “mega-mix.”
What you will hear in the short track I made is a mini reflection of the density of the sheer volume of materials that the Internet Archive has onsite. It is a humble reminder that through the computer, the telemarketing data network, and the wireless transmission of information, we have an immaculate reflection of what Alan Turing may have called “morphogenesis” — the human, all too human, attempt to corral the world into anthropocentric metaphors that seek to convey the sublime, the edge of human understanding: the emergent patterns that occur when you recombine material with unexpectedly powerful new connections.
I’m honored to be the first DJ to start. But I’m also honored that many, many more will follow. The Archive is a mirror of infinite recombinant potential. I hope that its gift of free culture and free exchange creates a place where we will be comfortable with what is almost impossible to guess comes next. It is not a “collaborative filter” but a place where you are invited to explore on your own and come up with new ways of seeing the infinite memory palace of the fragments of history, time, and space that make this modern 21st century world work.