Features

BRUSSELS — The dystopian near-future London depicted in “Watch Dogs: Legion”, the video game released on Thursday by French studio Ubisoft, is haunted by authoritarian surveillance and the ghost of Brexit.

A cyberpunk faction is battling to liberate the city from a privatised police force, and players can recruit everyday Londoners to the resistance, taking advantage of their skills to complete the quest.

Games reviewers have hailed the mechanism as an interesting twist on the genre, but advance publicity for the much-anticipated title has dwelled on the political texture overlaying the game play.

“London — had a good run there for a while,” a narrator intones at the start of the explosion-peppered trailer, before laying out all the ways things have gone wrong for the British capital in the fictional setting.

Ubisoft says it did not set out to make political commentary, and the game’s creative director Clint Hocking tells AFP that London was chosen as the backdrop for the game before the 2016 Brexit referendum.

“Brexit was as much of a curveball for us as it was for the British and the rest of the world,” Hocking says.

Curveball

Nevertheless, the political angst surrounding voters’ decision to quit the European Union has infused into the flavour of the game, which has ambitious themes to colour the usual puzzles and shootouts.

“When Brexit happened, it was quite a shock and it forced us, very early in the process... to start examining some of the themes and some of the consequences and future extrapolations of some of our themes,” Hocking said.

The game designers digitised familiar streets and landmarks in central London in great detail to provide the setting of their “sandbox” game, in which the player’s avatar roams an open world at will.

And the London setting allows them to explore in heightened way many of the social concerns felt in contemporary Britain — like the privatisation of state services and the all-seeing eye of surveillance.

Brexit is also part of the mix, with the player character, for example, manoeuvring in the early stages of the game though a ramshackle camp for “European migrants” on the outskirts of the city.

But Ubisoft doesn’t see the release as a political diatribe. The political themes are meant to complement the scenario in a way that the “game stays relevant” for players in search of realism.

“Brexit is not what is causing problems in our game world. Our game world is not about the consequences of Brexit,” says Hocking.

“The things that caused Brexit are the causes of the problems in our game world, like people’s dissatisfaction with wealth inequality, people’s frustration with their inability to have their voices heard.

Perfidious Albion

“These are some of the causes of disagreement, protest, Brexit, societal transformation that we’re seeing right now,” he argues.

The streets and buildings that host battles between surveillance drones, infiltration robots, rebellious Londoners and the mercenary cops of “Albion” — a fascistic corporate security force — are eerily realistic.

But, as the game’s title page notes, Watch Dogs is a work of fiction.

Olivier Mauco, who studies video games at the Sciences Po institute in Paris and founded an agency that introduces the techniques of game design into company management and education, plays down the political content.

“Ubisoft often surfs on the political themes of the moment,” he told AFP.

“They don’t deny political and social reality, but it remains a backdrop. There’s no political messaging behind it.”

The company may also be hoping that the release, followed next month by the major series climax “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” will help it put its own difficult year of social and political reality behind it.

Last month the company conducted an internal survey of 2,000 of its 14,000 employees and found a quarter had witnessed “workplace misconduct”, amid concerns about bullying and sexism in the games industry.

By Kilian Fichou

NEW YORK — Whether by repetition, rupture or reinvention, fashion has always maintained a complex relationship to time, a link New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is exploring in a new exhibition opening Thursday.

The show, delayed for months by the pandemic, was also tweaked last minute to take into account the Black Lives Matter movement that galvanised the nation this summer.

Normally the city’s social event of the year, 2020’s Met Gala organised by Vogue Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour — which usually opens the costume exhibit — was cancelled, like every major indoor gathering since mid-March.

To fete the 150th anniversary of the Met, Andrew Bolton, head curator of the Costume Institute, aimed to highlight the museum’s own collection that includes 33,000 pieces of clothing and accessories.

“When I began working on the show, it started off as this sort of meditation on fashion and temporality,” he told a press preview of the exhibit entitled “About Time”, which will run until February 7.

But Bolton didn’t want to focus on chronology, instead presenting concepts in pairs — two pieces, two parallel time periods with similar aesthetics, for a 124-piece show featuring a single gown to close.

“By having past and present coexist together, it sort of takes you outside of the confine of chronology and makes you think about time very differently,” Bolton said.

For Max Hollein, the Met’s director, “fashion captures, like very few other art forms, a time and a spirit — and projects it forward”.

Fashion revisiting itself

The concept creates an ongoing dialogue between older pieces that date back as far as the 1870s — when the Met was founded — and more recent items from the 1960s and beyond.

Elements common in 1870s-era wardrobes are seen again in the work of modern designers considered particularly innovative, including Alexander McQueen, Yohji Yamamoto and John Galliano.

Certain cuts, buttons, sequins, embroidery or lacing — formerly signs of opulence and particular social status — are now tools of novelty with purely aesthetic significance.

“Fashion is always for the movement, always about this succession of time and notions of, novelty and ephemerality and sometimes obsolescence and that’s one aspect of time,” Bolton said. 

“But at the same time fashion looks back on itself often.”

With shorter skirts and dresses and cuts that flow rather than restrict, modern designers give a contemporary edge to older pieces, like the iconic Chanel jacket.

A mini-skirt pairing gives the piece a facelift, thanks to the innovation of Karl Lagerfeld, a master of reinterpretation.

Today’s designers play with a far wider spectrum of materials than were available to their predecessors, thanks to technological progress and the evolution of use and taste.

Raf Simons embellishes a 2013 black strapless bustier dress with the satin flowers of Hubert de Givenchy (1957) — but in leather, a material only in recent decades popular with womenswear.

And sometimes older styles stand the test of time: Yves Saint Laurent’s tuxedo for women, for example, or his belted mini-dress of 1966.

New commitment to diversity

Forced to postpone the show six months, Bolton decided to modify it in light of the enormous anti-racism protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in May.

The original version, he said, included “some designers of colour... but not a huge amount.”

Vogue’s doyenne has faced accusations since June from some collaborators — and recently in a lengthy article in The New York Times — of long favouring fashion created by and for white people, and sidelining people of colour at Conde Nast.

Wintour, 70, attended the press preview of the exhibit but didn’t say a word.

“Undoubtedly, I have made mistakes along the way, and if any mistakes were made at Vogue under my watch, they are mine to own and remedy and I am committed to doing the work,” one of fashion’s most powerful figures told the Times recently.

Changes at the exhibit include a contribution from Black American pioneering designer Stephen Burrows, next to a Xuly.Bet dress from the Franco-Malian designer Lamine Kouyate.

Bolton vowed the initiative would not be short-lived, saying all exhibitions will now include diversity efforts.

By Thomas Urbain

WASHINGTON — When it comes to friendships, people are known to become more selective with age.

It turns out the same is true of male chimps, who have fewer yet more genuine pals to ape around with as they get older, according to a recently published study in the journal Science.

The research, which was led by animal psychologist Alexandra Rosati at the University of Michigan, was said to provide the first evidence that animals exhibit age-related social selectivity, and could help us understand more about why humans behave as they do.

The authors drew on a huge dataset of 78,000 hours of observations performed at the Kibale National Park in Uganda between 1995 and 2016. 

They reported on the social interactions among 21 wild male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) ranging in age from 15 to 58 years.

Males were chosen because they remain in the communities in which they are born, whereas the majority of females disperse to new groups when they become sexually mature.

Aside from being our closest animal relatives, chimpanzees are an ideal species to compare to humans because they live long lives — sometimes until their 60s — and have a wide-degree of choice in whom they befriend.

Male friends groom one another, hunt and share meat together, collectively patrol the boundaries of their territories, and form alliances to attain and keep high rank in their groups, which in turn leads to more individual reproductive success.

To study their affinities for one another, the team developed an “association index” that was based on how often a male within a party was in close proximity (under five metres) to another, relative to how much they associated with all group members.

The team produced three categories: mutual friends, who both showed a preference for sitting with each other, one-sided friends where only one party showed a preference but the other did not, and non-friends where neither side preferred each other.

According to the findings, older males had significantly more genuine friendships than their younger counterparts, whose attempts at bromance were more often lopsided. 

For example, a 40-year-old male had on average three times as many high-quality friendships and one-third as many asymmetric friendships as a 15-year-old.

Emotional maturity

Males over the age of 35 were also found to selectively groom their genuine friends, while the chimps engaged in less aggressive behaviour toward others in their party — such as hitting, biting, chasing or hostile displays — as they got older.

Finally, while the older chimps spent more time by themselves than the younger ones, when they did choose to mingle it was with important social partners.

Writing in a related editorial, Joan Silk of Arizona State University, Tempe, said the paper had provided “convincing evidence that male chimpanzees behave much like humans do as we age, and this pattern might exist in other primates as well”.

It had been theorised that, as people age, they focus on their oldest and most important friends rather than looking for new ones because of their approaching sense of mortality. 

But since chimps probably aren’t capable of such perspective, Rosati and her colleagues suggested other factors may be at play, like a reduction in emotional reactivity.

Strong friendships might also help aging chimps continue to thrive despite a decline in their health and social status, they added.

NEW YORK — The Boss got the band back together for his 20th studio album out on Friday, a work that sees the ever-reflective Bruce Springsteen converse with his past selves while meditating on his own mortality.

Springsteen’s album “Letter to You” fits neatly into his canon — a return to the layered guitars, dramatic percussion and glockenspiel that swelled into the signature sound he coined with his E Street Band, the group he’s performed with since 1972.

After years without inspiration to write new material for the band that includes his wife Patti Scialfa and close friend Steven Van Zandt — a guitarist also well-known for his role as Silvio in “The Sopranos” — Springsteen suddenly penned an album’s worth of new lyrics for the ensemble around the spring of 2019.

“The E Street band is not a job — it is a vocation. A calling,” New Jersey’s son-turned-America’s dad says in the documentary about the recording of his latest album, released on Thursday on Apple TV.

“It is both one of the most important things in your life — and of course, it’s only rock and roll.”

Last living member

“Letter to You” comes a year after Springsteen released “Western Stars”, a solo work harkening back to the 1970s-era musical golden age of Laurel Canyon.

With his new album, one of rock’s most ruminative stars returns to his familiar heart-pounding rhythms — but lyrically turns inward.

He’s built a decades-long international career weaving tales of characters from bleak American towns, but today Springsteen is singing of the friends he’s lost and considering his own life’s winter.

The artist’s relationship to his former bandmate George Theiss of The Castiles — a group that took in a novice teenage Springsteen — served as particular inspiration.

Theiss died in 2018, leaving the now 71-year-old Springsteen as the last living band member.

“The last living member,” he emphasises in the documentary. “I thought about it for a long time, and those meditations ended up being the songs I’ve written.”

The loss of one of his closest friends and E Street saxophonist Clarence Clemons in 2011 also weighed heavily on Springsteen, a heartbreaking event that came shortly after organist Danny Federici’s death in 2008.

His nine new songs include elegiac titles like “One Minute You’re Here”, “Last Man Standing”, “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and “Ghosts”.

The album recorded in just five days also includes three renditions of previously unreleased tracks from the 1970s: “Janey Needs a Shooter”, “If I was the Priest” and “Song for Orphans”.

Twangy, harmonica-laden and an exercise in lyrical excess, Springsteen says the songs “were and remain a mystery to me. They were just the way I wrote back then, a lot of words”.

He recalls with a grin a call from legendary producer Clive Davis, who told him one Bob Dylan — whose own work isn’t exactly known for its tight edits — said if Springsteen wasn’t careful, “I was going to use up the entire English language.”

Restore ‘American idea’

Though “Letter to You” is dropping just weeks before the US presidential election, it’s not a collection of political anthems.

“Rainmaker” tells of a demagogue who cons drought-plagued farmers, but Springsteen has said it’s not explicitly about Donald Trump, who the rocker has railed against.

The longtime Democrat has voiced support for Joe Biden and has emphasised the centrist needs to win the presidency not least to restore “the power of the American idea.”

The artist, who has praised progressives Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as well as the Black Lives Matter movement, also told Rolling Stone last month that “if we want to have the America that we envision, it’s going to need some pretty serious systemic changes moving leftward”.

Following the release of “Letter to You”, Springsteen in normal times would be planning a global tour next year, but due to the coronavirus crisis, he doesn’t think that could happen before 2022 — not a small concern for a rock star in his 70s.

“We’re taking this thing ‘til we’re all in the box,” he laughs, while toasting to the E Street Band during the film. “The greatest thrill continues to be... standing behind that microphone with you guys behind me.”

“It’s just one of the deepest experiences of my life. I love all of you beyond words.”

Successor to the Mercedes-Benz GLK-Class and similarly based on the C-Class of its era, the mid-size GLC-Class SUV was first launched in 2015, and updated last year. With mild exterior and interior styling updates and a host of expanded and updated technology and assistance systems, the revised GLC-Class models also included drive-line revisions with the addition of 48V mild hybrid technology and an improved full hybrid model, as featured here.

Designated the GLC300e 4Matic, the improved hybrid model gains improved electric output, a new gearbox, quicker acceleration and improved EV range.

A smooth, flowing and elegantly modern compact to mid-size premium SUV with a short front overhang and rearwards cabin design, reflecting its front-engine, rear-drive based architecture, the GLC-Class features smoother edges and surfacing than its GLK-Class predecessor, as well as a higher waistline and rakishly descending roofline. Little altered for 2019, the face-lifted GLC-Class features smaller, more vertical front side intakes, a more aggressive, and heavily chromed lower intake, along with subtle grille and light elements. At the rear, it also receives altered, squared internal light elements, more prominent chrome treatment and discreetly re-styled exhaust ports.

Swift and silence

With little but small badges to distinguish the hybrid model among the line-up, the GLC300e is powered by a combination of an in-line turbocharged, direct injection 2-litre four-cylinder engine developing 208BHP at 5,500rpm and 258lb/ft at 1,200-4,000rpm, and a transmission-integral electric motor producing 120BHP and 324/b/ft. Operating on combustion or electric power or a combination of the two, the GLC300e’s accumulated available system output of 315BHP and 515lb/ft effortlessly and briskly carries its hefty 2,030kg through 0-100km/h 0.2-seconds faster than its predecessor, at just 5.7-seconds and onto a 230km/h top speed.

Driving all four wheels through a 9-speed automatic gearbox replacing the pre-facelift model’s 7-speed unit, the GLC300e better utilises its output for improved performance, versatility and fuel economy, which is rated 2.2-2.6l/100km, combined. With a 13.5kWh battery, the GLC300e boasts improved 39-49km EV range in near silence, suitable for short commutes. More aggressive and faster driving on inclines naturally depletes the battery sooner. Meanwhile, regenerative brakes scavenge and convert some kinetic energy for on the move charging, but as a plug-in hybrid, full charging takes 5-hours on a household socket or 1.5-hours on a more powerful public charger.

Torque and traction

Responsive from standstill with its near instant electric shove and four-wheel-drive traction, the GLC300e is silent and confident in EV mode with plenty of ever-present torque. Abundant and muscular with both motors in operation, it, however, remains a good performer even when its batteries are depleted and it is running mainly on its capable and familiar combustion engine. Significantly heavier than non-hybrid GLC-Class variants, the GLC300e’s performance isn’t noticeably blunted by the additional weight when running on its combustion engine, and is flexible throughout its generous mid-range, and smooth and willing to its redline.

Balanced in its weight distribution and a well-handling vehicle for its weight and height, the GLC300e’s direct and quick steering benefits from the slimmer, less extravagant 235/60R18 tyre option fitted, which serves up better accuracy and feedback through winding roads, not to mention a more compliant ride than optional low profile AMG Line tyre and wheel options. Eager into corners and with good front grip when driven in petrol mode, the GLC300e has an instinct for slight under-steer when pushed hard into and out of corners with both motors unleashing massive, sudden surging torque.

Smooth and spacious

Driven just short of its full power capacity and with more measured inputs, the GLC300e is brisk and eager through switchbacks, with balanced weighting and relatively good lean control. Rear-biased four-wheel-drive provides both decent agility and grip, helps distribute power to be better utilised, and well minimises and quickly catches under-steer, when one flings the GLC300e through tight corners. Capable of 130km/h in EV mode, the GLC300e is stable, reassuring and settled at speed. Comfortable and forgiving over most textures with 18-inch wheels, the GLC300e could do with slightly stiffer front damping over certain speed bumps.

Pleasantly upmarket inside with contemporary classy design and quality, the GLC-Class’ cabin delivers good a good driving position, adjustability, visibility, parking manoeuvrability and space for front and rear passengers. Practical and user-friendly for the most part, the GLC300e’s boot volume is reduced from minimum/maximum 550-/1,600-litres to 395-/1,445-litres owing to hybrid components, while an optional boot floor strap-down — rather than under-floor — spare tyre, further reduces volume. Thoroughly well-equipped with standard and optional infotainment, convenience, safety and driver-assistance systems, the driven model featured reversing camera, parking assistance, blindspot warning and active brake assistance, among much more.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, turbocharged, in-line 4-cylinders/electric motor

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 9-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive

0-100km/h: 5.7-seconds

Maximum speed combined (electric only): 230km/h (130km/h)

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 208 (211) [155] @5,500rpm

Electric power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 120 (122) [90]

Combined system power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 315 (320) [235]

Power-to-weight, combined: 155BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 258 (350) @ 1,200-4,000rpm

Electric torque, lb/ft (Nm): 324 (440)

Combined system torque, lb/ft (Nm): 516 (700)

Torque-to-weight, combined: 344.8Nm/tonne

Fuel consumption, combined: 2.2-2.6 litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 50-60g/km

Fuel tank: 57-litres

EV range: 39-49km

Battery capacity, kWh: 13.5

Electrical consumption, combined: 16.5-17.8kWh/100km

10-100 per cent charging time, home socket 2.3kW/fast charger 7.4kW: 5-/1.5-hours

Length: 4,658mm

Width: 1,890mm

Height: 1,664mm

Wheelbase: 2,873mm

Track, F/R: 1,621/1,617mm

Overhang, F/R: 830/955mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.34

Headroom, F/R: 1,064/1,005mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1,455/1,436mm

Boot capacity, min/max: 395-/1,445-litres

Unladen weight: 2.030kg

Gross weight: 2,615kg

Payload: 585kg

Towing weight, braked/unbraked: 2,000/750kg

Steering: Electric-assisted, rack and pinion

Turning circle: 11.8-metres

Suspension: Multi-link, anti-roll bars

Brakes: Perforated, ventilated/ventilated discs, regenerative braking

Tyres: 235/60R18

By Dr Tareq Rasheed

International Consultant and Trainer 

We believe that we’re objective, logical and capable of taking in and evaluating all the information that is available to us when we’re making decisions. Unfortunately, subtle biases can creep in and influence the way we see and think about the world, leading to poor decisions and bad judgments.

The brain processes a lot of information each second. The flow of information our in the brain since childhood, from our surroundings, the environment, parents, teachers, peers and society, in addition to our own experiences with all these variables, are stored in our subconscious mind. With time, they formulate what is known as cognitive bias. These biases are often a result of our brain’s attempt to simplify information processing as we often need to reach decisions with relative speed.

Cognitive bias is the collection of faulty ways of thinking that is hardwired into the human brain. As much as we like to think we’re open-minded and impartial, different biases are continually influencing us and affecting our thinking, behaviours and decisions. We’re often not even aware of a bias that’s distorting our way of thinking.

Gender, culture, education, religion, age, experiences, attitudes and personality types are all variables that affect our perceptions about people, situations and our choices in life. Most often, such cognitive bias poses obstacles towards our freedom to choose and to make the best choice in any given situation.

BCD is the recipe of life

Our journey starts from Birth (B) and ends with Death (D) and in between, we have Choice (C), the secret to our success and happiness.

Each of us has the choice to explore opportunities and utilise potential. Our choices determine our future, our progress and ultimately lead us to indifference, despair or fulfilment. So the quality of our life, the way we go about living and the impact we have on the world around us and vice versa are all linked to the choices we make every moment. But when cognitive bias forms a strong belief in our minds, we limit our capacity to make effective choices.

The theory of choice

1.We have an urge to satisfy a certain need (hunger, love, security, friendship, pleasure and freedom)

2.The brain starts forming a visual perception of how to satisfy this need

3.A positive or negative choice is formulated to satisfy the unmet need in step 1

4.The decision is made

5.This decision will formulate a comprehensive attitude (emotional, spiritual and actions)

6.Our brain starts testing with the outer world the information associated with the decision to validate, change or modify our decision

7.Another filter is tested for the decision and this is a very important filter before the action starts. It is the Value-Based Filter: “Does the action I will take adhere to my values?”

8.We choose to act based on our carefully thought-out decision making process This process of making a choice will help:

• Enhance our self-awareness

• Control our actions and attitudes

• Deepen our beliefs and values

• Increase our expectations from the external world and environment

• Help us reach balanced and healthy decisions 

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

SEOUL — Ever heard of phase-change materials? They may have a complicated-sounding name, but these compounds could offer a serious avenue of pursuit in the quest to keep cool in heatwave conditions. This is because their properties can be used to delay the penetration of heat into our homes.

A Korean research team has now found a technique that makes this technology even more effective, by injecting bubbles.

Phase-change materials may sound incredibly technical — like a physics or chemistry student’s worst nightmare — but these so-called PCMs could help us to better manage heatwave conditions as well as spells of very cold weather.

They may sound too good to be true but, in reality, the solution is found right under our noses, in the natural world.

These new materials are, in fact, made from fatty acids and plant-based derivatives, but they can also take the form of sugars or waxes, paraffin oil being the best example from the construction sector.

Their advantage resides in their ability to store heat and release it later. Concretely, when these materials transition from a solid state to a liquid state — in other words, they melt — they absorb excess heat.

This happens at temperatures of 19°C to 27°C, depending on the material. When the ambient temperature drops, the compounds then return to the solid state, making good use of the accumulated heat.

Estimates suggest that peak temperatures in rooms could be reduced by 3°C to 4°C by using PCMs directly in the concrete bricks or plaster used to build homes. This new way of designing walls could help to reduce the use of air conditioning — which is good news for the environment — and, above all, reduce the need for heating.

Adding bubbles could improve performance

Scientists at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology recently published research that could help make this technology even more effective. Since the molecules in phase-change materials don’t all turn into liquid at the same time, heat still has a means of penetrating into buildings.

To solve this, the scientists had the idea of injecting bubbles into the material to encourage uniform melting. This helps keep buildings cool or warm even more effectively.

TOKYO — The coronavirus remains active on human skin for nine hours, Japanese researchers have found, in a discovery they said showed the need for frequent hand washing to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pathogen that causes the flu survives on human skin for about 1.8 hours by comparison, said the study published this month in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal. 

"The nine-hour survival of SARS-CoV-2 [the virus strain that causes COVID-19] on human skin may increase the risk of contact transmission in comparison with IAV [influenza A virus], thus accelerating the pandemic," it said.

The research team tested skin collected from autopsy specimens, about one day after death. 

Both the coronavirus and the flu virus are inactivated within 15 seconds by applying ethanol, which is used in hand sanitisers.

"The longer survival of SARS-CoV-2 on the skin increases contact-transmission risk; however, hand hygiene can reduce this risk," the study said.

The study backs World Health Organisation guidance for regular and thorough hand washing to limit transmission of the virus, which has infected nearly 40 million people around the world since it first emerged in China late last year.

In just a generation, the digital world in general, and the Internet in particular, have turned the music scene upside down, and then up again. More than a cultural revolution, it is a radical transformation of our habits and of the way we think of, listen to, and perceive music.

One of its latest tricks is a nice little free service, courtesy of Google (yes, it’s them, again), made available on the web a few days ago, and that can recognise a tune if you hum it or whistle it for a few seconds. Apps that do a similar work, like he excellent Shazam for example, have been around for a long time. The app, however, needs to listen to an actual, a “real” industry recording to recognise the music; whistling or humming the tune yourself won’t do.

I tested Google’s melody recognition, putting it to the test with tunes that I, intentionally, whistled only approximatively, not perfectly, to see the real extent of the performance and how fault tolerant it was. It worked flawlessly each time.

I challenged it by humming pop songs and classical melodies too — both led to successful recognition. In a couple of instances, it returned multiple possible results, which is fair enough. To access the service, I launched Google’s assistant on my smartphone with a voice command and asked it “can you recognise this tune?”

Song recognition is but a very small part of the digital music transformation, one that is merely on the funny side of it. Music streaming perhaps is its most striking aspect, the one that has the greatest impact on our listening habits. In the overwhelming number of cases people have long given up on using recorded media like CDs, to enjoy listening to music.

Most sill go to YouTube and the like. Those who prefer a cleaner sound, practical playlists, and music videos that are free of advertising, subscribe to dedicated streaming services like Spotify, to name the most popular of them all. According to statista.com the celebrated platform now has 138 million subscribers, double of what it was a couple of years ago. The trend is clear.

Spotify does not just store “almost all the music in the world”, it also lets you build playlists that you can share with other subscribers as well. So if your friend Laila, who assumingly has a musical taste close to yours, has made a nice playlist on Spotify, you just access it an play it, this way sharing the pleasure of listening to the same contents as Laila, and saving yourself the trouble of building the playlist. This is a perfect example of how online music is blending with the social aspect of the streaming service. Today both aspects are indissociable.

When playing a music video on YouTube, the benefit is not only in the listening pleasure, but also in the social interaction associated with it: seeing how many views did it get, how many likes, what are the comments of those who viewed it, and so forth. Some are even more interested in this social window than on the purely musical side of the experience.

With the social element smartly added to most online services, the entertainment digital world wants to show us that whereas living online keeps us apart from each other, physically speaking, some aspects of it do keep us close — in a certain way. How true this is remains a matter of opinion.