In my previous post on the future of listening to music, Futurist Magazine senior editor Patrick Tucker commented on how rapid advance of technology would ultimately lead to an evolution of cochlear-implant-like devices, and that content would be directly beamed to these devices in your head. During a WFS Annual Conference session on the End of the Written Word, Mr. Tucker referenced similar devices, and how they will eventually supplant the optic exercise of reading.

He also, rather ominously, declared that a major challenge to this process would be the ability of marketers to blast unlimited sales pitches for products to your brain in perpetuity. The only defense could be to simply turn the device off. Not the most efficient model. I asked Mr. Tucker if hitting the off switch was the only option, how could you be marketed to for the products you actually wanted, like a new album from you favorite band?

We would have to make conscious choices about what data streams we wish to subscribe to, pretty much the same way make decisions about what RSS feeds we like today. This means you would have to know a great deal about what you wanted to listen to in order to learn more about it, which is a Catch 22. However, I’m sure service-providers will pop up offering to find music for you in accordance with a list of stated preference.

The more interesting question might be, what other stuff will slip through the filter? Take the failure of the do-not-call- registry. I’m on it, but I still receive solicitation calls all the time. It used to be just nonprofits I had given money to. Today I get calls from banks looking not to “sell” me something but to “inform” me that my time is running out to act on some special offer. The idea of Bank of America, the Sierra Club, and the DCCC all talking in my head while I’m trying to listen to music bodes well for future musicians that can deliver music the really old-fashioned way, live [my emphasis].

So while constant touring is a major source of income for many acts, in the future, it will also be their most trusted marketing effort. Good news for DC fans and venues alike.

I attended the World Future Society’s annual conference this past weekend at the Washington DC Hilton Hotel. Seminars and panel discussions ranged on a variety of topics (PDF of the conference program), from examinations of emerging energy technologies to the future of the religious right. One panel in particular, the End of the Written Word, was especially interesting. Four experts discussed the recent shift away from traditional writing, and its implications for, well, the future.

Since the digital age has transformed how we seek and consume music at least as much as it has impacted the written word, I contacted one of the panel members. I asked Futurist magazine senior editor and WFS Communications Director Patrick Tucker his opinion on the future of music consumption. His generous and insightful response is below:

Within the next thirty years, we’ll become more comfortable incorporating wireless technology into our biological functioning. The success of the today’s cochlear implant provides a great example of how willing we already are to explore electronic enhancement related to auditory stimulation. Cochlear implants are small devices that doctors surgically insert near the skull to improve hearing in the impaired. Today, Cochlears are used solely for medicinal purposes, but there’s no reason why a similar gadget couldn’t be wired to receive phone calls, email, or download music. Because most of what we call hearing occurs not in the ear but in the brain this music wouldn’t have to pass through the ear, it could be directly targeted to new neuron groups [my emphasis].

In the future, we’ll become more adapt at targeting our sound (music) neurons and getting them to fire and spark in all sorts of interesting ways. The notion of making “music” by sending sound waves from radios, through the air to peoples’ ear drums will come to seem as quaint as using a coffee can and fishing wire to make a telephone call. Instead, we’ll send sound or music over a radically-improved version of what we today call the Internet in the form of data. In other words, future downloadable music will contain notes, sounds, and rhythms that would be imperceptible to us today.

We literally cannot even imagine what it might sound like, but some recent neuroscience breakthroughs may give us a clue. According to a study performed by Lizbeth M. Romanski and Patricia Goldman-Rakic, there are three types of auditory neurons. One type (phasic) responds only at the onset of noise and then resets; on a line graph this would look like a spike. Another type of neuron (tonic) has a long sustained response to stimuli; this would look like a wave. A third type of neuron (phasic-tonic) has a strong initial response, followed by a less intense, wave response. Most classical music, unbeknownst to the people that composed it, primarily affects the second type of neuron. If it’s successful, it creates a modulating emotional response in the listener. Dance music targets the third neuron type. What is the 4 on the floor beat pattern, after all, except a series of high intensity jolts re-arranged into rhythmic wave? Now imagine being able to hear, distinguish, and appreciate a dozen different types and pieces of music all at once, along with liner notes and visual displays. In terms of what the liner notes might look like, the outtakes and bonus features that come packaged with todays DVDs will serve as an ancestor.

Curing a hearing disorder, however, is entirely different than improving upon otherwise perfect hearing. For all our technological cleverness, we understand very little about the miracle of the thinking organ, least of all how to augment a design that’s far superior to anything humankind has ever come up with. We are, however, learning more all the time and in the next thirty years, we may finally be able to put our vastly improved neurological understanding to the test.

Heady stuff indeed. And Phasic-Tronic is just lying out there for an aspiring DJ or group to appropriate as a band name…album title…

Soon, I’ll post our conversation regarding the future of music marketing.