Review: 'Solid State' by Jonathan Coulton (jonathancoulton.com) 47
We're reviving an old Slashdot tradition -- the review. Whenever there's something especially geeky -- or relevant to our present moment -- we'll share some thoughts. And I'd like to start with Jonathan Coulton's amazing 2017 album Solid State, and its trippy accompanying graphic novel adaptation by Matt Fraction. I even tracked down Jonathan Coulton on Friday for his thoughts on how it applies to our current moment in internet time...
"When I started work on Solid State, the only thing I could really think of that I wanted to say was something like, 'The internet sucks now'," Coulton said in 2017 in an epilogue to the graphic novel. "It's a little off-brand for me, so it was a scary place to start..."
So what does he think today? And what did we think of his album...?
"When I started work on Solid State, the only thing I could really think of that I wanted to say was something like, 'The internet sucks now'," Coulton said in 2017 in an epilogue to the graphic novel. "It's a little off-brand for me, so it was a scary place to start..."
So what does he think today? And what did we think of his album...?
Somehow Jonathan Coulton ended up with a surprisingly relevant dystopian scifi fantasy -- in two different mediums. "I'm very proud of this album, and it says a lot of things that are close to my heart," Coulton said Friday.
But first some background: if you haven't heard the news, Jonathan Coulton can do anything. In 2005 he quit his job in software and became what samzenpus called an "internet rock star and former code monkey," eventually opening for music legends like Aimee Mann and They Might Be Giants (one member of which later produced Coulton's 2011 album Artificial Heart). A geek favorite, Coulton's work was eventually featured in three different Valve videogames. (And the story of one of his arrangements being borrowed by the TV show Glee later ended up as a story on The Good Wife [executive produced by Ridley Scott].)
It's been a wild and unpredictible ride for Jonathan Coulton. (In 2017 he was even nominated for a Tony for his work on Broadway's SpongeBob Musical, and while co-writing some songs for Aimee Mann, he was also creating his own concept album about our tech-saturated society.) Oh, and this March, Coulton also released a crowdfunded album of 1970s soft rock covers "that sound exactly like the originals" -- because he can.
I say that because the first track on his album Solid State seems to very consciously borrow Pink Floyd's piano part from "Us and Them" at a perfect moment. It's a lush and lovely arrangement that contrasts with the cacophony of its synthesizer intro (with a distant siren in the background). But it's setting up the theme of the entire album: what happens when our human-ness confronts our very technological world?
Yes, it's a concept album. (Does anyone listen to albums any more?) On his web site, Coulton says this album is about "the internet, trolls, artificial intelligence, and how love and empathy will save humanity." Although he had a lot more to say about that on Friday.
"I feel like when I wrote it, we were still in a kind of slow motion cultural digital apocalypse. And then Trump was elected, and it made me think we were much further along than I had feared. Suddenly my worries about us being mean to each other on the internet felt a lot less pressing."
"That said, I think a lot of it still applies. Basically, the internet and social media are technologies that are way too powerful for us to use responsibly right now. This is a common cycle with tech of course, somebody makes a thing that breaks all the rules, people abuse it, it beats us up for a while, and eventually we figure out how to manage it better. I still believe we're in the middle of that kind of cycle. It's exposed how small and scared and nasty we all are, and my hope is that we will eventually see that and learn how to be better humans. If I were an AI waking up right now, I would definitely bug out for a while until we sorted that out. Anyway, fingers crossed."
There actually is a song about a sentient AI -- although I like how all the songs on the album cleverly keep you guessing about the rules in this future world. For example, that first song is about those feelings of promise as you wake up in the morning -- but who's singing the song? "We can't make a move without you. We can only dream about you. Wondering what you're keeping behind those big baby blues?"
There's another hint in the graphic novel adaptation of the CD, apparently riffing on a line from the album's second track: the view from "the edge of our zone." ("One of the friendlier machines says I should leave it alone.") The first line of that song brags, with a weary vocal, that "Ten thousand seven hundred days we've been accident-free...." And there's another hint in the album's (only) music video -- which consists entirely of footage of someone playing a text adventure about a robot supervisor on an assembly line who dreams of one day seeing the moon.
Aimee Mann sings the harmony part.
So it's a beautiful album with giddy, exhiliarating melodies, that's just bursting with creativity. (Even in the choices of instruments -- and other sounds...) But there's also tantalizing hints of a larger story lurking underneath all the songs. ("All eyes watching, no one's noticed me yet...") It seems like crucial details are missing -- for example, the line "All at once, it fills up my feed. More bad news that I didn't need..." (in a surprisingly poignant song with a chorus that begins "So I am looking at pictures of cats.") But the graphic novel imagines that disaster as a growing social media backlash, with angry protesters thronging outside the gates of "the Boojiplex."
While reading the graphic novel, I had to ask myself if Booji represented Google, Facebook, or a sinister combination of them both. ("They all clicked 'agree' after pretending to read the rules like the 1.9 billion other users all over the world did...") But the "bad news" leads to what can only be described as an ultimate privacy apocalpyse. (Depicted obliquely in a dark track called "Robots.txt")
Coulton has apparently said this protagonist is "a hacker and a script kiddie and a troll. He hates most things. Everyone is stupid. He sits in his basement and leaves anonymous comments on people's YouTube videos telling them that they should kill themselves..." (Although ironically, my source for that is an unverifiable comment that somebody left on Genius.com...) That somehow just makes it that much more tantalizing...
Throughout the individual songs there's clever lyrics. ("Long on bitcoin and regret...") And have you ever heard the saying "Dance like no one's watching you?" One of Coulton's characters has their own cynical take on that, in a song titled "Don't Read the Comments (and don't feed the trolls)."
"Dance like they're watching you. Because they are watching."
I found an explanation at (again) Genius.com, where one contributor quotes Jonathan Coulton (without attribution) as saying that that song is about "An AI who wakes up, reads the entire internet, realizes [internet users] are all assholes, and leaves."
In fact, one lyric from this song became the back-cover art for the vinyl album -- and turned up in a weird video announcement of the album's release, purportedly starring a comical version of Anonymous. The vinyl album had a cool "analog animation" effect when you slid the album out of its plastic sleeve. "Dance like they're watching you," blared the red, all caps letters on the back -- but sliding the album further from its plastic sleeve changed the words to "Because they are watching."
That video convinced me that the life of Jonathan Coulton must be sweet and magical -- and it's obvious that this whole project was an intense labor of love. There's a few sweet and honest songs about personal relationships -- like "Ball and Chain" and "Your Tattoo" -- that represent scenes throughout the life of an aging IT worker, who apparently got himself caught in the middle of something much, much larger. And if you bought the "deluxe" vinyl edition, it came with a USB drive with a QR code that eventually led to a web site with a secret hidden track that fills in some of the drama. ("You unwrap the world they sold you. It's a trap but no one told you...")
So it's a complicated story, scattered in different places, and I really enjoyed digging into something complex, satirical, and sophisticated. It's dramatic, intensely creative, yet also surprisingly personal and even sweet in some moments. And it still packs a punch. One of the early songs asks "What if Kurzweil doesn't make it? What if all the switches get stuck on destroy? When the shuttle goes, we won't take it. And the final counter-measures are deployed..."
But somehow there's also a hopeful message in this universe, in a later song about the people who "Walked away as the skyline crumbled and fell..." -- and a surprisingly upbeat chorus.
"Watch the world unwind... Here in the sunshine! Cast a shadow on the world that's gone... Paint the edges of the road we're on..."
"Hang on tight, everybody," Coulton says at the back of the graphic novel, adding "I still believe we'll get there."
Jonathan Coulton has uploaded the entire (Creative Commons) album to YouTube and Spotify.
In 2011 -- and again in 2014 -- Coulton answered questions from Slashdot readers. And in 2012 Coulton recorded a special commemorative version of his geek anthem "Code Monkey" to celebrate Slashdot's 15th anniversary.
Revive another tradition: EDIT (Score:1)
Time for the Slashdot Editors to fix mistakes, issue corrections and remove the nazi, apk, reimer and other garbage posts.
IT'S GOING DOWNHILL FAST.
DO YOUR JOB.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, what the fuck? You're spending time on music reviews when slashdot readers are old people who already have musical preferences, and ignoring the damn nazis running loose? Trolls are bad enough, but we have nazis and the fucking KKK shitposting and EditorDavid is acting like these are just good people.
Questions/feedback for the editors (Score:4, Informative)
First off, it's great to see book reviews back. This is an excellent decision by the editors. I encourage you to bring back features (user-submitted commentaries, how-to articles, etc...) and slashbacks (stories that feature brief updates to several previous recently posted articles). I'm a big critic of how Slashdot is run, but I'll give credit where it's due -- and bring back book reviews is an excellent move.
Can ordinary users submit book reviews, too, or will this just be the editors reviewing books? I encourage you to allow anyone to submit a book review. In the past, book reviews and features weren't submitted to the firehose the way other stories were. Instead, they were emailed to specific email addresses for the editors to review them there. If you're accepting user-submitted reviews, what's the procedure for submitting a review?
Thanks in advance! And I'm glad to see book reviews return to Slashdot!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's a different bunch of popular websites. But yes, I've been known to buy more comic books than I actually need too.
Re: (Score:2)
Brevity is lost on many.
Re: (Score:2)
I like to see book reviews, so glad they are back. Variety is good, and for a while Slashdot was getting too political and too depressing. If I wanted that I'd just go to regular news sites.
Important and more details (Score:2)
I don't recall many editor written reviews. I recall a lot of user-submitted reviews (and from users I recognized from their comments, not editor sock puppets). That definitely made it feel more like a review and less like an advertisement, even though, of course, all reviews are both.
.
Re: (Score:2)
While we're at it, what's Jon Katz up to lately? Or has the "hellmouth" chewed him up?
Post Geocities Internet (Score:5, Interesting)
We live in a age where no-one can build their own website, and dreams only of hitting it big on Patreon or the IPO circuit with some responsive site-in-a-box design designed to send ads. Shallow mobile sites have become the universal norm. 5MB web pages with mandatory javascript all but sell our machines wholesale to ad companies who now block sites with EULA-like agreements. No-one tries to be funny anymore, and search engines have made us forget how to find anyone who is. Propaganda is bigger than pornography on today's web, and the censorship is so bad entire limbs have become gangrenous.
Somewhere behind all the garbage that has sprung up over the last 10 years, another internet is waiting to be born. Let's hope it's the old one and not web 3.11.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Somewhere behind all the garbage that has sprung up over the last 10 years, another internet is waiting to be born.
Let's suppose that happened, and it was good.
How then does one then avoid Eternal September 2.0?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Post Geocities Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the key thing is having shared open protocols and formats. That's the thing we have to get back to.
Right now, you have every company trying to establish their own new walled garden. Instant messaging is a good example-- Facebook has their messenger, Microsoft has theirs, Google and Apple and Slack each have their own. There are dozens of others, and in fact a bunch of these companies have multiple different IM applications, each with their own protocols, and none of them can talk to each other. Why? It's not because any of them are doing anything so complicated that a common protocol couldn't possibly be created.
The problem is that each of these companies don't want to work together. Each of them have some interest in walling you into their "walled garden"-- which should really just be called a "prison". The walls aren't really to keep the bad guys out as much as they are to *keep you in*. Every company wants to have their own little incompatibility built into everything so that you're perpetually locked into using their products, and your friends need to use their products to interact with you.
We need to make a cultural move towards standardizing things again. We need to get together the best minds from Microsoft, Google, and Apple to come up with a model for email 2.0. We need to develop a single set of messaging protocols that can allow people using Hangouts and Teams and Slack and Signal to talk with each other, and to talk with anyone who wants to wants to write their own implementation. We need to create a single set of standards for identity management, including SSO and 2FA and whatever other cool technologies we want, so we can securely authenticate without the risk of phishing.
If we could do that, and restore real freedom to the Internet, then we wouldn't have to worry so much about privacy and EULAs, because you could just use another provider that has better privacy policies. Ultimately, the problem with Facebook isn't that they don't respect your privacy. We've known since they started that they don't respect your privacy. The problem is that, knowing that they don't respect your privacy, you can't simply take your business elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
it was unnecessarily complicated by XML
When did XML become complicated? I mean; if you want to build your own web site, XML (and other technologies) had better be something you can easily handle.
but also other issues
It's not proprietary.
Re:Post Geocities Internet (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
It's the opposite. You used to have to pay for hosting, and then learn some HTML or buy some software to make your own website. If you wanted to put MP3s or even videos up the costs rapidly spiralled, and it took people ages to download them and they had to pay because their connections were metered.
Now it's effortless to share media and build a presence on the web.
It's also easier to be found now. Used to be that search engines were crap and web rings were a thing. If you ever used a web ring you would kno
"consciously borrow" (Score:2)
Um, yeah. That is one way to put it.
Re: (Score:2)
They answer the first question in detail right at the start of the article.
Re: (Score:2)
Eh??? (Score:1, Troll)
Re: (Score:1)
To put it simply Jonathan Coulton is an entertainer. You should give a fuck what he says if you find his content entertaining. If you don't, you should ignore it and let people who do enjoy it, you know, enjoy it.