Regression of Technology Pt. I: Music as an Analogy

And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Genesis 1:28 (ESV)

And how we've subdued it. Amazing to think how life is so much different than it was thousands, hundreds of years, or even a decade ago, all due to the way we (humans) have changed the earth, and exercised our dominion over life on this planet (that is, if you live in a society changed by technology). We've sought to make life better, easier, etc. for ourselves and others. But honestly... have we?
Okay, humans have made things easier for themselves, that's obvious. I'll just say I'm glad I have access to plumbing and electricity: it means I don't have to use an outhouse or read by candlelight. But in making life easier, have we lessened it's quality? And have we really made life easier, or are we just fooling ourselves?
I think we can understand the impact on daily life progress in technology has made by examining one of my favorite subjects: music.
Technological advances in computers have made music easier to create, more accessible, and more portable. In many ways, the invention of the laser disk in the 1960's pioneered the application of computer technology to the medium of music. The laser disc, which didn't actually catch on too well, of course gave birth to the almighty Compact Disc. I guess I can remember back to when cassette tapes were still more popular than CDs, and I definitely remember when our computer didn't even have a CD-ROM drive. And when I got my first CD boombox, I was super pumped, because it meant I could instantly skip songs and I didn't have to deal with the hiss of older cassettes. When I finally got an iPod last year, it revolutionized my musical experience again, allowing me to have my whole musical collection in my possession at almost any time, and obtain music for myself from a seemingly limitless source. Many have utilized the Mp3 player as a source of ever-present entertainment, and it's hard to imagine that only five years ago, iPods and the like were just hitting the market, and only the rich and hip really had them. But if we go back two or three decades, music storage was dominated by a technology that predates Mp3s, CDs, and cassette:s vinyl albums.
Despite essentially growing up on CDs and Mp3s, I have recently been listening to a lot more vinyl, mostly old and some new. Why would I listen to something on a device that I can't carry around, can't rewind or fastforward on, and can't skip around artists as much as I please? Because all those things make my music experience easier, but not better.
Many have compared the quality of vinyl to newer methods of music storage, and I've researched a little bit to try and understand the differences. CDs actually work in a very similar way to vinyls, but of course instead of "grooves" read by a needle, a laser reads information encoded as little "divots". Unfortunately, this means that where vinyls contain more or less exact copies of sound waves, CD's contain only chopped up parts of the sound. These parts are so small and close together, it's hard to tell, but some argue that the mind has to do more work to "fill in" the gaps when listening to a CD. I think a fair comparison would be film vs. digital cameras: digital cameras translate seen image into pixels while "old fashioned" cameras make an "exact copy". In addition to sound quality, many proponents of vinyl recordings note that most CDs have a smaller frequency range that is well within the range of human hearing. Vinyl, on the other hand, can play sounds above what a human can hear, such as a dog whistle.
Even if CDs are only slightly inferior to vinyl, Mp3s are clearly worse. I don't know that much about computers and thus exactly how Mp3s work, but from what I understand, they have up to ten times less actual information than a CD due to compression. I guess this means if you are listening to a Mp3, you're only hearing 1/10th of what you would listening to a CD.
In my mind, vinyl has other advantages over CDs, Mp3s and cassettes. One of the biggest advantages is that vinyl is the biggest! That's right... even though a single record is considerably less portable than a whole music collection on an iPod, records can display album artwork much better. Which I think is a big deal. (Cassettes have laughable album artwork... I think the development of cassettes probably even lead to many bands shortening their names). Oh, and sitting down and listening to music is nice, instead of using music to block out the rest of the world (i.e. chirping birds and rustling leaves as you're walking to class.)
In addition, with a record, you can't fastforward, skip songs all the time, and as I said before, changing artists all the time is out of the question. I can hear you say "Wait, isn't this a disadvantage?" Well, maybe. But nothing beats listening to a whole album all the way through once an awhile. You get a broader view of the artist and their work instead of the impression that a hit single gives you.
I hope you get the point I'm making: maybe listening to records isn't necessarily better than listening to your iPod (and I love my iPod more than just about anyone), but in a lot of ways, I think it is better. And all of the technological advances we've made to make music more portable and accessible has ended up diminishing music by lessening its quality and the quality of listening to music in general.
Back to my broader point: for all the progress technological advances provide, there sure is a lot of regress. All of the improvements the human race has made for itself have created other problems that need to be remedied with more improvements! And thus we have an endless cycle of taking one step forward and two steps back....
Despite the length of this post, it's only the set-up for a totally different topic applying the same principle . I want to examine and write about how advances in building technology have greatly diminished the architectural quality of most buildings we use today. Specifically, I want to analyze modern places of living, work, and recreation according to Vitruvius' standards (firmitas, utilitas, venustas; or strength, usability, and beauty) and also discuss how our current way of building isolates us from nature. I want to try and discover a better way of subduing the earth, and a better way of stewarding the dominion God has entrusted us with. So stay tuned.

As a quick sidenote: ironically my iPod has recently stopped working.