Tomorrow at 1 pm in Room C301 at UCLA’s Anderson School, Mike O’Hare will talk about the problem of how to pay for recorded music in a world where recorded music can be perfectly and nearly costlessly copied, and the linked problem of how a listener can figure out what music he hasn’t heard yet he wants to listen to. In a previous talk, Mike discussed the problem from the composer’s viewpoint, in a Malthusian world in which new music competes with an ever-growing historical inventory for scarce ear-share.
The talk is part of the Jacob Marschak Colloquium series, which the oldest established permanent floating social-science seminar at UCLA.
As nominal co-chair of the series (in reality, Mike Intriligator does 99.5% of the actual work) I will be introducing Mike and chairing the Q&A session. With both of us in one room at the same time, some metaphysicians warn of the risk that the reality field will become so intense as to form a singularity, an ontological black hole with reality-binding so strong that no semantic content can escape. So come at your own risk.