Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Paging Arthur C. Clarke...

Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science fiction writer, developed three "laws" of prediction, known as Clarke's Three Laws. The third of those laws is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. In other words, if you were to find yourself in Biblical times with a computer, to the people native to that time, the fact that the computer works will seem as magic to them.

Apparently, this law holds today as well. From YNet:

A recently released album containing songs performed by legendary cantors has been causing turmoil among the ultra-Orthodox community due to the simple fact that the performers are all dead.

Apparently, the concept of manipulating audio recordings is too advanced for some people, because they

flooded the company with questions and complaints: "How is it that the cantor knows to wait for the orchestra? There must be some sort of spell here Рis this s̩ance? Does the Halacha allow tampering with the voices of the dead?"

I just don't know what to say... I'm at a complete loss for words.

The Wolf


Hat tip: Blog in Dm.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dumb, Dumber,Dumbest?

Baruch said...

If you read the article, you'll see that, from a frum perspective, those who are complaining are certainly wrong on this issue.

How do I know? Rashi said so. Who are these "chareidim" to argue with Rashi?

(couldn't help myself)

Leah Goodman said...

good thing they don't have televisions... The Orville Reddenbocker commercials would have blown their minds...

Commenter Abbi said...

I admit i didn't read the article, but cantors have been making albums since at least the teens or twenties. I don't get how voice recording is so mysterious to even charedim. This must be a very extreme sect because most charedim have recorded music in their houses.

Anonymous said...

Haven't these guys heard of chazarat ha'shatz?