Broken Social Scene It's been hard getting info on this crowd -- they are one of the various musical communes that are emerging -- they've been coming up on the low power radio charts but finding some of their tunes and info about the members has been interesting -- they finally have a new website but (like us) they aren't done yet -- enjoy this -- they're part of an interesting new design of making music --


University of Texas

Christine Martucci is a veteran of the Jersey Shore music scene -- just a rilly great voice -- she had a website a few days ago but it's under construction now -- and she's working on a new CD which we hope to snag as soon as possible --


Goddard College, Vermont

Hop Frog Kollectiv is another one of these emerging musical communes -- this is how they describe themselves: "The hop-frog kollectiv itself is a mix of over twenty participants who focus on experimental spoken word, art & music. In only two years of existence, the core members of the kollectiv have performed with Not Breathing, DJ Cheb I Sabbah, David J (Bauhaus, Love & Rockets, etc.), Steve Mackay and The Radon Ensemble (The Stooges, Violent Femmes) & Dame Darcy (Meatcake) under the names hop-frog's drum jester devotional and The Master Musician's of hop-frog."


Emerson College, Boston




keos 89.1 fm
Texas A&M University



kaos 89.3 fm
Olympia, WA


wsum 91.7 fm
University of Wisconsin@Madison



wcdb 90.9 fm
SUNY@Albany, NY



kpfa 94.1 fm
Berekley, CA



wrbb 104.9 fm
Northeastern University, Boston, MA



kult 94.5 fm
University of Northern Iowa



wrpi 91.5 fm
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY



knon 89.3 fm
North Texas Radio



kwmr 90.5 fm
Point Reyes Station, CA




wort 89.9 fm
Madison, WI


Michael Berest (continued)

So what do you consider service? Banking? Shopping? School? Medical care? Who's to say there won't be means to do it over a web network?

Can this even provide equivalents of Star Trek: TNG's holodeck so you can go anywhere in the world "or beyond" without ever having to leave your bedroom? Could "virtual reality" be taken so for the line between virtual and real might be erased?

Ay, there's the rub.

The slow movement toward Marshall McLuhan's global village, which might someday even be the galactic kitchen and the universal village, is the brave new world they've been warning us about. The displacement of one reality with a new and improved one may end up making us as distanced from each other as if we lived solar systems apart and even an "I can't believe it's not reality!" reality-substitute will make us lose enough of our humanity to mean we're not human at all.

I just have a strong feeling if you took a farm family from the plains from the early 1900's and used your magic wand (Harry Potter's brought them back into fashion - everything old is new again) to bring them to today, they would undoubtedly look at everything we have for communication that they didn't and be disgusted by how self-contained from everyone around us we've become.

We'd look at them with shock. We still interact with people. We still interact with the world. Not just every moment of every day as you did. If I speak of what we may lose in a web network, it's obvious I don't share that 1900's family's opinion of the loss of my humanity.

Maybe I don't know how much I have lost. Or maybe I know that life cannot be improved if technology stands still. In 1900, the average lifespan was 40 years. Now it's 80. Children regularly died or were crippled from polio, scarlet fever, small pox, diphtheria or a number of other diseases we either have vaccines for now or have become so rare we don't even need vaccines for them.

Technology is what we make of it. The saving of children from death from infectious diseases is not a sign of diminishing humanity. No technology has to be. As much as the newspaper, radio, TV, and the web have been exploited by some people to gain power or money, there have still always been people considered naïve enough to think, if used idealistically, selflessly, and philanthropically, any medium can only extend our humanity.

We see where we may go. We may have no choice but to go. But even if we have no choice but to go, we do have the choice to decide where we do go.