David Cope: ‘You pushed the button and out came hundreds and thousands of sonatas’
Composer David Cope has spent the last 30 years teaching computers to create classical music • Hear an example from David Cope's Emily Howell project • Download an Emmy Bach-style invention Where does music come from? If pressed on this question, many of us would say it comes from the "soul", or from the "heart" of the person who composed it. That music is the clearest expression of human emotion, one person to another; that certain chords, certain melodies seem to communicate a whole language of feeling. When we listen to a Beethoven symphony or a Chopin sonata, we are hearing, we might say, the authentic expression of the composer's inner harmonies and discords, carried magically across the centuries. Could we ever be so moved by a piece of music written by a computer? We'd probably like to think not. David Cope, emeritus professor of music at the University of California, Santa Cruz, would beg to differ. "The question," Cope tells me, "isn't if computers possess a soul, but if we possess one." Cope, now 69, has devoted the past 30 years of his life to what amounts to an obsessive examination of that particular question. He began, almost by default, back in 1980, with a severe case of writer's block. One of America's most acclaimed young composers, whose music had been performed at Carnegie Hall, and won great critical praise, Cope had been commissioned to write an opera. For weeks and months he sat at his piano, or stared at a blank piece of sheet music; nothing came. He had a wife and four children to support. In desperation he started playing with a computer. What he found there changed his life and, perhaps, the course of musical history. Cope had long held the belief that all music was essentially inspired plagiarism. The great composers absorbed the music that had gone before them and their brains "recombined" melodies and phrases in distinctive, sometimes traceable, ways. We all have an internal database of musical reference; composers were those with the ability to manipulate it in new patterns. With the aid of an early computer, he realised he could put this to the test.
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David Cope: 'You pushed the button and out came hundreds and thousands of sonatas'
How sports sims became the real deal
Ever wondered how video game characters are able to replicate the unique technique of a David Beckham free kick or a Tiger Woods drive?
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How sports sims became the real deal
Jakob Nielsen critiques the iPad’s usability failings
Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has just published a report on the iPad, and thinks Apple should allow more diversity on its platforms – including the option for Adobe Flash Apple's iPad has usability problems , and shows an "overemphasis on aesthetics", according to usability guru Dr Jakob Nielsen, who has just published a free 93-page report on iPad usability. He was in London last month where his company, Nielsen Norman Group , was holding a usability conference. Since he had an iPad in his hotel room, I asked him how well it had turned out. "In some ways, less well than I expected," he said. "There were really a lot of usability problems in this first-generation of iPad applications. It's often quite difficult for people to discover what they have to do because the options are not very visible. I have to say of both the device itself and the content, it's very attractive, which is good.
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Jakob Nielsen critiques the iPad's usability failings
Suzi Perry: ‘I would really like a teleporter’ | Celebrity squares
Gadget Show presenter Suzi Perry unveils her favourite gizmos What's your favourite piece of technology and how has it improved your life? I'm going to generalise and say the smartphone. Starting from Nokia's N95, I've had a bunch of smartphones since they came along – they're feature-rich and bring everything from the office to your pocket. They've made life so much easier. When was the last time you used it, and what for? I've got a BlackBerry Bold and an iPhone. I'm on the BlackBerry right now, talking to you, and I've been using my iPhone this morning to arrange a virtual sporting event. What additional features would you add if you could?
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Suzi Perry: 'I would really like a teleporter' | Celebrity squares
Chinese workers link sickness to n-hexane and Apple iPhone screens
Staff suffer health decline after supplier's use of toxic chemical to clean western gadgets Next month, amid the usual hoopla, Apple is expected to officially unveil its latest gadget: the much-awaited iPhone 4G . But halfway round the globe from the company's California headquarters, a young worker who has spent months in an eastern Chinese hospital wants consumers to look beyond the shiny exterior of such gadgets. "People should know what we do to create these products and what cost we pay," said Bai Bing as she perched on a bed in her ward. She is one of scores of young workers in the city of Suzhou who were poisoned by the chemical n-hexane, which they say was used to clean Apple components including iPhone touch screens. Wu Mei – who, like the others, asked the Guardian to use her nickname – recalled her fear as her health suddenly deteriorated last spring. At first, she thought she was simply tired from the long working hours at Wintek, a Taiwan-owned electronics giant supplying several well-known brands. She was weaker than before and noticed she could not walk so fast. "Then it became more and more serious. I found it very hard to go upstairs and if I squatted down I didn't have the strength to get up. Later my hands became numb and I lost my balance – I would fall over if someone touched me," she said. By summer, she was admitted to hospital, where doctors struggled to diagnose the cause. "I was terrified. I feared I might be paralysed and spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair," she said. Because she was using n-hexane directly, she was one of the first and worst affected. But more and more workers from the same room were suffering headaches, dizziness and weakness, and pains in their limbs. An occupational diseases hospital which saw several victims diagnosed the problem in August and Wintek stopped using the chemical.
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Chinese workers link sickness to n-hexane and Apple iPhone screens
Will Foursquare be the new Twitter?
An application that allows friends to track one another's movements when they're out and about could be the next big thing in social networking In 2001 Dennis Crowley, a young interactive telecoms graduate from New York University, found himself turning over a particular problem in his head. Crowley and a lot of his friends had been involved in various internet start-ups which, after the dotcom bubble burst, had gone pop. The problem was this: the friends were mostly living in East Greenwich Village, and they were around most days, but they never got together as much as they liked. Some days someone would be going to a baseball game, or someone would be going to a bar, or to the park, but there was no easy way of co-ordinating this social life among the group (this was back in the mists of networking time: Facebook hadn't been invented; even Friendster hadn't been invented). Crowley found himself applying his idling mind to the question of whether there might be a way of letting your friends know where you were, without making 20 phone calls; of taking the chance out of chance meetings. A decade later, after various part-evolved efforts to come up with a solution to this problem, Crowley seems to have found one that works. He is the co-founder of Foursquare, an internet site and iPhone application that allows you not only to advertise to friends (or friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends) exactly where you are in the world, but also incentivises the processes of going out, and meeting up. Foursquare has extended way beyond Crowley's mates; it is becoming a bookmarked fixture among circles of friends in cities across the States and the world. The application is approaching its millionth user; inevitably, in the way of these things, blogs and investors are buzzing about it — and rival "location, location, location" services, such as Gowalla — as this year's Twitter: the next geeky obsession to become a mainstream media compulsion. Crowley explained some of the potential to me last week on the phone. "We want Foursquare to be a lot about encouraging adventure," he said. "To give you a reason to do things and go places that you might not always think to do." He was, when he was developing his idea with his business partner Naveen Selvadurai, particularly interested in a couple of phenomena: the first was the psychology of Nike+, the sensor that allows you to collect data about your jogging and store it and analyse it on your iPod. "After I started using it," he says, "I was struck by the idea that if you forgot to turn the sensor on one day, then the run itself seemed to have no point. It was the sort of game-playing, data-collecting habit of the run that encouraged you to do it." He became fascinated by the idea of virtual rewards. "A lot of our group," he says, "had grown up with Super Mario and they wondered about the possibility of turning life into a game. Getting rewards for adventures just like Mario did on screen." Foursquare incorporates all of these ideas into its format. Using GPS location in your mobile phone it encourages you to "check in" to any location – bar, café, shop, event, park bench – and not only to share that fact with your friends but to win virtual badges and points for your activity. There is a competitive element to this.
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Will Foursquare be the new Twitter?
Oren Peli: ‘I’m not a nerd or a luddite, I’m a geek really’
The writer and director of Paranormal Activity admits he's a sucker for the latest bit of gadgetry What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life? I would say it's probably my new phone, the Palm Pre. I use it for everything – email, browsing the web, applications, listening to music. I just use it non-stop. It's the one thing I use more than anything else except for my PC. When was the last time you used it, and what for? I'm using it right now! What additional features would you add if you could? I'm pretty much sure it does everything I need at the moment… maybe better support for global travel? Because I think it's limited in the number of countries that it can work in. Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time? Yeah, I think most technology will be obsolete in 10 years and will be replaced by something better. What always frustrates you about technology in general
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Oren Peli: 'I'm not a nerd or a luddite, I'm a geek really'
Bernard Rose: ‘Built-in obsolescence is a problem nobody talks about’
The film director on why he loves editing on his laptop, hates PCs, and why he's scared of having a robot in his house What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life? I would have to say non-linear editing systems in general, and now, specifically, Final Cut Pro. I've used them all over the years, but now Final Cut Pro is the most convenient and user-friendly one. When was the last time you used it, and what for? I'm using it today, cutting a movie. The technology has put the tools of production into a laptop, basically. What additional features would you add if you could? I think someone should try to integrate sound editing programs with video editing programs. There's no reason why you could not edit the sound to much higher accuracy rates within Final Cut Pro. Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time? Of course. I think that's what going to come next, ironically, will be more tactile – it's going to go back to feeling more like that. What always frustrates you about technology in general? Built-in obsolescence is a huge problem that nobody talks about – the way that a lot of the files we create now will be very difficult to play in 10 years from now. All these file formats will become obsolete. Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated? I once owned a PC and I absolutely loathed it – it was the biggest piece of junk that you cold imagine, I couldn't make anything work on it. If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be? For me, the key is that the people who make the stuff – the software and the hardware – tend not to do the work [that it's intended for]. You can't let them tell you how to use it, you have to find out how to use it yourself, and its capabilities
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Bernard Rose: 'Built-in obsolescence is a problem nobody talks about'
Imogen Heap: ‘Don’t blame the machines, it’s not their fault’
Why singer Imogen Heap wants to make electricity out of horse manure What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life? I was going to say Macs, but everyone says that, so I'm going to go into geek mode. I have these wireless wrist microphones that I wear on stage – they are throat mics that I've adapted. The audio gets picked up and goes into my computer. What's great about them is that I can wander about on stage and grab any instrument – like the wine glasses I use – and the mics are in the perfect position to pick up the sound. They've completely transformed me on stage. When was the last time you used them
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Imogen Heap: 'Don't blame the machines, it's not their fault'
Sir Clive Sinclair: "I don’t use a computer at all"
The entrepreneur and innovator tells Simon Garfield about inspiration, determination and why he doesn't do email… Thirty years ago this month, Clive Sinclair launched a computer that he hoped would change the world. In the majority of cases it only changed the way people played primitive computer games, but it also turned a bespectacled, prematurely balding man into a hero for our times. In those dark days before Windows 7 and the iPad, the Sinclair ZX80 represented the pinnacle of affordable domestic computing. It was a flat box without a screen or proper keyboard, it had the memory of a hamster and at the back of it was something that looked like a radiator grille but was actually a strip of plastic designed to look like a radiator grille. It promised it could do "quite literally anything, from playing chess to running a power station", which was good value for something costing £79.95 in kit form and £99.95 assembled, about one fifth of the price of other home computers. Sir Clive, who was knighted for services to industry at the age of 43, will be 70 later this year. He lives in an apartment overlooking Trafalgar Square, and from his adjacent office he has a magnificent view of tourists and lions (recently he also had a view of people performing on Antony Gormley's fourth plinth, but that "got a bit boring really"). He was a household name before Sir Alan Sugar, and for a while was the unlikely future of modern electronics: a bright, hi-tech uncle rejuvenating British industry blighted by decay, unions and Thatcher. Sinclair helped transform Cambridge into the computing capital of the world, a homegrown version of Silicon Valley and Taipei, and for a couple of brilliant years he made the bestselling computers in the world
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Sir Clive Sinclair: "I don't use a computer at all"