David Byrne and Cory Doctorow: Wassup Internet?!—Music in the Digital Landscape

David Byrne is a Scottish-born musician and artist most known for his role as a founding member and principal songwriter of the band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography, opera and non-fiction. He has received Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe awards and been inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Byrne's latest book How Music Works, is a brainy, irresistible adventure, and an impassioned argument about music’s liberating, life-affirming power.

Cory Doctorow is a co-editor of Boing Boing and a columnist for multiple publications including The Guardian, Locus and Publishers Weekly. He was named one of the web’s 25 influencers by Forbes magazine. His award-winning novel Little Brother was a New York Times bestseller. His science fiction novel The Rapture of the Nerds, co-written with Charles Stross, will be published in September 2012.

Jesse Hirsh is a Toronto based broadcaster, researcher and strategist, operating the firm Metaviews.ca. He has a nationally syndicated radio column on CBC Radio examining the impact of technology upon our lives. Educated at the McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto, Hirsh likes to play with words.

Exploring how profoundly music is shaped by its time and place, legendary musician David Byrne explains how the advent of recording technology in the 20th century forever changed our relationship to music. Acting as historian, anthropologist, raconteur and social scientist, he shows how certain patterns have affected his own work over the years as part of the band Talking Heads. From the joy to the physics and even the business of making music, Byrne creates an irresistible adventure and an impassioned argument about music’s liberating, life-affirming power.