PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING
of the Aponi. He slides his fingers into three continuously variable
ergonomic switches.
The Aponi is an interface to the keyboard equipped with little
hammers driven by electromagnets and a diskette-reading
unit. The music score for the piano part has already been optically
read and recorded on the diskette. The Aponi is capable
of “playing” this score flawlessly and at any speed. Furthermore,
it offers the possibility of personalizing the
interpretation (via the switches) in the only three possible
ways: faster/slower, piano/forte and staccato/legato. All mechanical
work is done by the machine. All intelligent work—
the interpretation—is left to the soloist who can express fully
his or her inner self while performing the most difficult piano
pieces effortlessly.
Pianist and conductor exchange a glance and the concert
begins. In a little while the familiar soothing melodies dampen
the agitation of the audience. People become less aware of the
intruding machine as they notice the usual leaning forward and
backward movements of the soloist—to play forte he has to
push down on the finger switches. But at the end of the concert
the agitation builds up again, particularly as rumors start circulating
rapidly that the soloist is no musician but a secondgeneration
Italian restaurant owner who likes opera and classical
music.
Even more anger is expressed by critics in the following
day’s press. Musicians, and particularly pianists, feel the rug
has been pulled from under their feet. Men and women who
have spent their youth laboring over keyboards, sometimes
damaging their bodies in their quest to acquire superhuman
techniques, bitterly resent this competition from a mere amateur.
The most annoying consequence of the new invention is the
embarrassment it causes among all lovers of live music. Appreciation
in concert halls is purportedly directed toward the
performer’s gift to interpret. His or her technical ability always
comes in second place. Now that a machine has made it possible
for anyone to interpret without effort (the Aponi does all
the mechanical work), there is not enough dynamic range in in-
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