James Ferraro - Human Story 3 (2016)

Human Story 3 in its essence is a dialectic on the discord between technological advancement ,human folly and human progress. folly characterized by assessing the loss that occurs in the way technology is being integrated and applied to our lives. progress, in that technological aid on a 21st century scale is arguably humankind’s greatest intellectual achievement. From the back drop of such grand technological achievement spawn forth the distinctive qualities that make the hyper individualistic age. Visible in developments in marketing of products and its emphasis on the individual,advances in consumerism and market values, the smartphone as a marker of the fortified empire of individualism, and from which birthed more inconspicuous signs such as the selfie, a crude and seemingly benign tech age behavior,nothing more than a symptom of the age.

however one could speculate that it might be one of many rudimentary tale-tale signs of the coming technological singularity taking shape. I wanted this work to consider the state of humanity as we set forth towards this age of cognizant machines and automation. In that light for me our behavior seems to be illuminated more clearly. humanities inability to live up to machines programmed to reflect human virtue.

in contrast to cognitive machines that store all of human ability in its most practical and virtuous form, human beings seem riddled un-virtuous with folly.and it makes me wonder if the dispossession of human achievement,that seems to be occurring in our present day will be restored via our successors artificial super intelligence and perhaps this is the human story

Human Story 3 actualizes this dilemma scenario placing humans at the crossroad of technological innovation and human dispossession in musical commentary.
a smart society of thinking machines, this scenario would show the limits of human nature while at the same time exhibit the infinite possibilities of human intellectual potential, wouldn’t it be a great tragedy if
that same human intellectual spirit that brought us thus far, from the stone age to industrial age to possible future automation age became paradoxically the double edged sword of our dispossession from ourselves?

it is my hope that Human Story 3 weaves this dialectic for the listener.
it isn’t a treaty calling on the abandonment of our tech revolution, however it is a motivation to apply our technological tools in a way that services the higher purpose of human beings, a service to what is commonly embraced as human achievement.
Human Story 3 is at one hand in praise of the human journey and our intellectual triumphs while on the other hand presenting elements of a requiem, a musical exposition of human folly in the light of the everything hyper individual age.

Tracklist:

01. Ten Songs For Humanity 3:50
02. Marketphagia 3:59
03. Individualism 5:31
04. Market Collapse 3:51
05. GPS & Cognition 2:29
06. Security Broker 2:50
07. Anthropoceniac 5:00
08. Neotenous Smart Car 3:34
09. Plastic Ocean (Poem For Deep Horizon) 2:28
10. Immanent Cloud 4:13
11. Plastiglomerate & Co 3:27