The incommensurable magnitude of Wikipedia’s recent changes
I love infinity.
One of the truly revolutionary contributions of the web’s digital machinery to the arts is that it has made the infinite potentially accessible. There are no longer any practical objections to conceiving of a piece of music that, in theory, will continue to develop and sound forever. Infinite compositions are algorithmic: their description (the score) is of finite length. They are tiny machines which continue to play until we no longer are able to provide the power needed to keep them going. The objection that a single human being will only be able to hear an insignificant, an almost-nothing, part, of an infinite composition, and that such a thing therefore can not be called ‘music’, is interesting, but philosophical.
In practice,‘accessible infinity’ will remain highly limited. Along with the rest of you, I would not put my stakes on a bet that there is even one thing in this universe that takes forever and ever; something that maybe once had a beginning, but that is without an end. In view of the little time that we are given: ‘very, very, very long’ for us mortals counts as a good enough approximation.
