In the mystery of the endless
Cecilia Meireles
a planet is balanced
In these almost 70 years of my life, I have seen many changes… The last 30 years have marked the beginning of the threshold of a new “era”.
This period is similar, in terms of the magnitude of change in behavior, to moments experienced by humanity in the past; such as the government of Julius Caesar in Rome, which preceded the Roman Empire; the capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans, which marked the effective end of the Middle Ages; and many other significant events that led to major changes in the course of history.
However, none of these events occurred without a long process of “preparation” that preceded them; this is one of the differences that mark the new period of the world’s evolution.
We have never seen, in such a short space of time, changes in the way we live, communicate, produce and transmit data and knowledge like what is happening.
“By raft it takes forever
From a saveiro it takes an incarnation
By the light wave
It takes a lightning long time.”
The beautiful music of the late 1980s enchanted and absorbed me, a young doctor who had graduated about 10 years earlier, and other young people who were striving to understand and help change the world. We were thrilled by Gilberto Gil's interpretation of the time, “Before it was far away” (…) “Today, behind the mountains, there is a house for a friend.”
It's breathtaking. However, none of us could have imagined, at that time, what was to come.
Cell phones arrived in 1990, first in Rio de Janeiro, and in about 3 years they spread throughout Brazil, but they were a luxury item for the middle class, in the USA and Europe they had already existed for 2 decades.
Until cell phones became widespread and were enriched by new technologies, correspondence between people was done through letters sent by post, telegrams using Morse code, then came the voice telegram, the telefax, the fax and, in cities between 1980 and 90, beepers and, soon after, pagers (we called them “peiges”).
Each point of this is worth a story, and I'll tell it later. Today I'm going to talk about the recording and distribution of music, through the 78 rpm (revolutions per minute) shellac record, nicknamed "bolachão"; succeeded by the vinyl record, 331/3 rpm, known as LP, long play; then came the laser disc, CD.
There were also cassette tapes, launched by Philips in the early 1960s, and sound and image media, the VHS tape, betamax and the famous DVD.
All of this ended, each in its own time, and was replaced by streaming platforms, linked to cell phones and personal computers, to the point that anyone under 30 years old has no idea how music was listened to outside of concerts.
It is worth mentioning the changes in devices and the great technological shift that was the evolution, or rather, revolution, marked by the change from the analog world to the digital world. Things are just beginning.
From the first shellac record, invented in 1870, widely sold from 1895, to the first vinyl record took 6 or 7 decades; the 78 rpm would coexist with the LP until the end of the 60s.
And it took another 6 decades for the CD to appear, in 1982 it appeared in Japan, soon after in Europe and the United States.
In 1987, it appeared among us with the advent of mp3 technology, which allowed us to record 60 songs on a single CD; it seemed to everyone as an irreplaceable thing, some even naively thought it would last a lifetime. It didn't last 20 years.
Today, some people, in niches, use radios, 3-in-1s, tape players, CD players, to listen to vinyl records, CDs and cassette tapes. I have only touched the tip of the iceberg, the changes are much deeper.
In fact, the new world is just beginning. I will leave one concern for all of us. These technological advances must be used for the good of humanity. It will depend on us to reduce poverty, promote peace and freedom, and increase the sense of community.
Technological evolution should be accompanied by social evolution.
(Elomar Figueira de Melo)
“I dream that at the last bend in the road
There is a place without pain, without stones, without thorns
But if you suddenly get there and don't find it
I will continue walking and searching.”