2018-04-12
Disco-Punk in Music, Computing and Academia: personal intro for Ian Rogers
We are
thrilled to Present Ian Rogers whose approach and career highlight
a Punk attitude we share. Of course, there is the superficial connection of our
being professors and DJs, who love and often play the Beastie Boys. But we want
to focus on a deeper philosophical stance we think we share and which is very
needed in academia---potentially exemplified by SICE. We think of it as a Punk-Disco attitude. Punk and Disco
became wrongly seen as opposing forces due to the racist and homophobic
"disco sucks" movement. But, in truth, the two informed one another
from the beginning, as both originated at the same time in NYC, as a revulsion
against the erudite affectations of the white men ivory tower that Rock, Jazz,
and Classical music had become. While Punk brought a DIY attitude to breaking
walls, Disco broke them via a melting pot pleasure principle: it melded the Latin
sounds of Puerto Rico with Philly R&B to produce hymns of sexual liberation
for everybody---be it Donna Summer's hymn to female orgasm (in I feel love) to
openly gay, bisexual and transgendered acts like Sylvester, Grace Jones, The Village People,
etc. As Johnny Rotten/Lydon (lead singer
of the Sex Pistols and P.i.L.) famously said: "I like disco, it is functional music that makes people
dance". In fact, most punk acts of the time liked and indeed produced
disco: from David Byrne (who played guitar in cult disco hits) to Blondie (a
white female Punk Rocker with the first disco-rap #1 hit in America) to the
Thin White Duke himself.
The point
here is that effective rebellion is
made by empowering people to do it themselves, include everybody's point of
view, and be fun, sexy and stylish at it! To bring this discussion back to us
here in academia and SICE, let us acknowledge that ours is the ultimate ivory
tower dominated by white people. Punk-Disco is not naturally rewarded in siloed
departments and hierarchies of elite schools and scholars. Nothing could be
less Punk-Disco than a Nobel prize, the pinnacle of academia. Indeed, it is no
accident that both Johan and I started our careers at the Los Alamos National
Lab, home of some of the most Punk-Disco scientists of all time like John and
Klara Von Neumann and Richard Feynman. But SICE attracted us because of its
original breaking walls vision, which was at heart Punk-Disco---I only came here
because I was recruited by the most Punk-Disco philosopher of our days: Andy
Clark. We work every day to break the ivory tower, with DIY ethos but also functionally and in style---be it with
our new NSF-NRT interdisciplinary training grant that attempts to find a common beat
between computing and the social and physical sciences, be it with our
attitudes to fight the accepted wisdom of academia, which even when
well-intentioned tends to approach everything with a white-elitist bias.
All this to
highlight how important it is for us at SICE to remain connected to Punk-Disco movers and shakers like Ian Rogers.
His phenomenal trajectory from CS here in Bloomington to forging digital music
revolution (winamp, TopSin, Beats Music, Apple), to his role now in shaping
more personalized fashion and luxury at LVMH, we can think of no one more
Punk-Disco than him. Academia needs to learn from his lessons, "because
our crystal ball ain't so crystal clear" we need his "Super Disco
Breakin, Money making". "I'm tellin' y'all it's sabotage."
Indiana
University, April 12, 2018
Labels: #Computing, #Disco, #DIY, #Informatics, #Music, #Punk
