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> technology of the millenium
> change of the millennium

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take the veryard projects fever cure

	Don't offer or accept anything *for the next millennium*. Be pleasantly surprised if the new things, relationships and ideas even last as long as the old ones.
	Don't expect much from any project labelled Vision 2000, Programme 2000, or the like.
	The date-change is merely a symbolic change. Make some real changes.
	If it's important, don't put it off until January 1st. Do it now.
	If it's not that important now, it probably won't be important next year (decade, century, millennium). Enjoy the party.

musician of the millennium

According to a popular poll, claiming half a million votes and broadcast on UK Channel Four on Saturday November 13th, the most influential musicians of the last thousand years are as follows.

details

1: John Lennon	2: Elvis Presley	3: Michael Jackson	4: Jimi Hendrix	5: Paul McCartney
6: Robbie Williams	7: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	8: David Bowie	9: Bob Dylan	10: Johann Sebastian Bach

Er, excuse me?

Yoko Ono, delightedly accepting the honour on Lennon's behalf, mentioned Beethoven and Bartok. Bartok was also mentioned by Nigel Kennedy, interviewed in connection with Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which came top of the Classical Music poll. If there was a poll among musicians, Bartok might just rank higher than Robbie Williams.

And what counts as influence anyway? Surely not the same as popularity?

Inventors of Form Who invented the symphony? (It wasn't Beethoven.)
Who invented the opera? (It wasn't Verdi.)
Who invented the pop song? (It wasn't Lennon.)
Who invented the "concept album"? (It wasn't the Beatles.)

Pioneers of Style Who pioneered the baroque style? (It wasn't Bach.)
Who pioneered the classical style? (It wasn't Mozart.)
Who pioneered rock and roll? (It wasn't Presley.)

Leaders Some musicians have spawned large numbers of imitators and followers. (Among pop musicians, Dylan and Bowie are noted for this form of musical leadership.)

Culminators Some musicians (Bach, Wagner) have taken a given style to its logical conclusion, leaving no room for imitators and followers. The style ends, and a new style begins. In the history of pop music, the explosion of punk after the virtuoso excesses and pretensions of 1970s rock music. Punks were influenced by Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman (classically trained rock musicians with long hair and complex musical ideas), insofar as they made a point of doing the exact opposite.

(This raises some thoughts about innovation, influence and leadership, that go much broader than music.)

Finally, let's put in a word for Pope Gregory I (590-604), undoubtedly the most influential musician of the previous millennium. Gregorian Chant has been sung around the Christian world throughout the millennium and is still hugely popular, fourteen hundred years after St Gregory. Ambrosian Chant may be sweeter, Old Roman Chant more solemn, Beneventan Chant more ornamental, but it's Gregorian Chant that has survived.

For some beautiful alternatives to Gregorian Chant, I urge you to explore the recordings of the Ensemble Organum directed by Marcel Peres, released by Harmonia Mundi. As an added bonus, some of these recordings also feature the incredible voice of Sister Marie Keyrouze.

pope of the millennium

One of the most brilliant mathematicians of his time, the French monk Gerbert became pope in the year 999, taking the name Sylvester II. He remained pope until his death in 1003.

Among other things, Gerbert is credited with the invention of the first modern mechanical clock, as well as the introduction of Arabic numerals into Western Europe. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes associates him with the abacus, the terrestial and celestial globes, and the organ. Islamic historians recognize him as one of the earliest translators of scientific knowledge from Arabic into Latin.

Five centuries before Leonardo, six centuries before Galileo, he deserves an honoured place in the history of ideas. I find it almost incredible that such a man should also have been elected pope. But fitting, perhaps, that a mathematician should occupy the Holy See as the new millennium dawned.

Thanks to his intellectual links with Islam, some contemporaries saw him as the Anti-Christ. They saw his election as pope as a confirmation of the imminent end of the world. Their closed world was indeed to come to an end, partly as a result of the technologies pioneered by Gerbert, but this would not occur for several centuries.

technology of the millennium

What is the technology that has, above all others, dominated the past thousand years? The clock.

There is a legend that the first modern mechanical clock, worked by falling weights, was invented by a monk called Gerbert, who later became Pope.

Regular time-keeping and order was an essential feature of monastic life, especially under the Benedictine Rule. Work and prayer were controlled by the clock. This pattern of work was later transferred to secular working practices, and became a feature of early factory organization. It is primarily for this reason that Lewis Mumford traced the origins of the Industrial Revolution back to the tenth century.

Writing in the 1930s, Mumford identified the clock as the key machine of the industrial age. Clocks are everywhere.

Nowadays, we might think that the chip has replaced the clock as the ubiquitous machine. Except for the fact that the chips themselves all contain clocks. I'm sure many people didn't realise that a lift mechanism contained a clock, until the Millennium Bug Alert drew our attention to the fact. There are hardware clocks, software clocks and quartz clocks. And of course there are still millions of clockwork clocks. (My cooker is too old to contain any computer chips, but it features an electrically powered clockwork timer.) Clocks are everywhere.

change of the millennium

As a result of the dominance of clocks, our experience of time has been radically transformed over the past thousand years. This affects the way we perceive change, and the speed of change.

More recent technologies have started to enable a similar transformation of our experience of space. Starting with transport, which enables us to travel much greater distances than our forebears, and news media, which give us information about events in distant lands (or even distant planets). More recently, Virtual Reality and the Internet have started to introduce more strange experiences. There is a need to develop ever-more complex modes of topological reasoning - what is connected to what, what is accessible from where, what is protected from whom, how can this be stretched or squeezed into that.

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	Inventors of Form	Who invented the symphony? (It wasn't Beethoven.) Who invented the opera? (It wasn't Verdi.) Who invented the pop song? (It wasn't Lennon.) Who invented the "concept album"? (It wasn't the Beatles.)
	Pioneers of Style	Who pioneered the baroque style? (It wasn't Bach.) Who pioneered the classical style? (It wasn't Mozart.) Who pioneered rock and roll? (It wasn't Presley.)
	Leaders	Some musicians have spawned large numbers of imitators and followers. (Among pop musicians, Dylan and Bowie are noted for this form of musical leadership.)
	Culminators	Some musicians (Bach, Wagner) have taken a given style to its logical conclusion, leaving no room for imitators and followers. The style ends, and a new style begins. In the history of pop music, the explosion of punk after the virtuoso excesses and pretensions of 1970s rock music. Punks were influenced by Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman (classically trained rock musicians with long hair and complex musical ideas), insofar as they made a point of doing the exact opposite.