Topophilia / Fissiparous

The first of today's words means great love or affection for a particular place. And, since I'm doubling up due to a second burst of inspiration, the second word means a tendency to break into many parts.

I've been very very unwell this week (well, moreso than usual), and so it's been difficult to get this done, so I'm trying to double up while I'm able to.

In my last post, I spoke of using a piece of software to run my guitar through a series of emulated effect pedals. To cut a long story short, Guitar Rig doesn't work with analogue signals. I was running my guitars through the line in port on my laptop, which merely amplifies the signal recieved and keeps it as an analogue signal. However, when buying Guitar Rig, (something that I'd foolishly overlooked) an actual physical rig is provided. That is, somewhere to plug a guitar into that connects to a computer via USB. This rig converts the analogue signal recieved into a digital (to be pedantic, a signal that is converted to digital from analogue is known as a digitised signal) signal that is suitable for being manipulated by the Guitar Rig software.

A digital signal is essentially a binary digit. It has one of two states; on or off. The main advantage that digital music production has is its resistance to minor wave degradation. Analogue waves are far more sensitive to the degradation than digital waves, since an analogue wave is not of a discrete value like digital,  it is more continuous, and so interference is not quantised and is merely amplified with the rest of the wave. However, where wave degradation is more pronounced, analogue systems produce a more recognisable sound, whereas the digital system will fail completely, trying to quantise the wave, and reading the degradation as part of the wave. I'm really hoping that this makes sense, because I'm exhausted and ill, and I can't really analyse my own writing very well right now.

Anyway, back on topic, I ended up having to give up on Guitar Rig and download a more analogue-friendly piece of software -- Amplitube. Now, this piece of software worked fine, but I've still got to get used to the controls and find the right effects that I need to produce an accurate replica of Map Of The Problematique. There's just one minor problem in that there's a little delay between the input and output, which is quite offputting when attempting to play in time.

I am, however, able to just use my built-in sound-card to amplify my guitars via the line in port, and send them out of the headphone socket. And from there, they are pumped quite forcefully out of sixteen speakers, including one very powerful subwoofer (Subwoofers are designed to deal specifically with lower-frequency sounds, producing a rich, deep bass). This is fantastic when I'm playing my electric guitars acoustically, since there are no effects run over the initial sound, and it doesn't suffer any distortion like it would do on a standard practice amp. However, when I plug my bass into it, a more beautiful phenomena occurs. The sound that fills the room is enough to knock the socks off of even the most seasoned rock Gods. At a medium volume, and with relatively gentle picking, the bass is enough to make the windows rattle. Literally speaking, with no exaggeration whatsoever, my windows rattle. I love it.

However, I've spoken about this for two (well, one and a half) blog posts now, and I have another topic to discuss here, so I am moving on.

Social networks. Facebook being the most prominent online one, with the now-defunct Bebo and MySpace fading quickly into the virtual ether. But first, let's dig a little deeper.

Before the Internet, what was a social network? In many terms, the same as it is today. It's just easier to monitor and analyse today with the Internet and social networking sites. But a social network is merely as it says. The way in which people interact. But they are so complex, so intricate even, that they must play a much wider purpose than just being the way in which we interact with our friends.

For example, take a dyad (a social network of two) of a married couple. They have been married many many years. It is observed that when one falls ill, the risk of the other becoming ill rises. Should the wife die, the risk of the husband dying increases. And so on. But surely this does not only apply to couples. Correct. It applies to every social network. To study how networks form and function, it is necessary to understand how they are formed. One cannot make friends with just anyone. We are governed by socioeconomic status, distance, even our own genes and DNA. Networks have been studied for years; for example neurologists studying networks of neurons. But the difference this time is that the nodes or vertices in the network are sentient, thinking, breathing, living human beings.

Already it is shown to be more than just a network. It can be considered as an organism itself. It grows, evolves, has its very own unique structure, function and purpose. Which shines a completely different light on the study. By interpreting a social network as an organism itself, we can assume that each node is strongly affected by any other nodes that are directly, or indeed indirectly associated. Don't believe me? If your mother was deeply upset, would you not too feel somewhat upset? Conversely, if your best friend has the biggest grin on their face, would it not make you too feel happy, or maybe even smile yourself? Imagine each of those scenarios and put yourself emotionally in them.

This interconnectedness that means that we lose some control over our own decisions. But this is not a bad thing. It is through this interconnectedness that we can overcome our own inhibitions and limitations, transcend ourselves even. As a powerful force, we can as a society do things that no one individual can do. Just as a brain can do things that no one neuron can do, a social network can achieve what a single person cannot. For many years, illnesses, human psychology and evolution have been analysed on an individual basis. But surely, as has been so far illustrated, human interaction has a much greater effect on all of these than just individual issues.

And with that, I finish. I'm feeling so horribly ill right now, so I might get some sleep.

"To know who we are, we must understand how we are connected."