Digital Understanding

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, as we have heard, digital technology has transformed our lives, with the same import as the invention of the wheel. My noble friend Lady Lane-Fox of Soho has reminded me of the important strictures of one of my composition teachers—that you will only ever get out of any venture rewards in direct correlation with what you put in. That lies at the heart of this timely debate.

For example, I can press a button and digital technology will play me a piece of music—but by exploring that technology further, by investing time and creativity in it, I can do so much more. I can write music directly on electronic manuscript paper, or I can play it on a keyboard and the technology will notate it and play it back. Is that not absolutely extraordinary? Just imagine if Bach or Mozart had had that technology. Their improvisations would have been preserved for posterity, and instead of their laboriously writing out by quill all the individual parts for violins, violas, woodwind and brass, and sending them by horse to musicians desperate to rehearse, the technology would extricate the parts, which could then be sent instantly all over the world, where they could be printed—or even, as now happens, be performed by reading from an electronic tablet, just as I am referring to my notes now. Mozart would surely have had time to finish his own Requiem, and so much more besides.

Let us follow the example of composers, scientists and artists of this stature who seized technological advances in their own time, and by understanding them were able to transform knowledge and to write sublime masterpieces for instruments that were still in their infancy. Mozart’s clarinet concerto, and his quintet, are perfect examples of not merely using advances in technology but understanding their potential. Look at how David Hockney has used digital technology in his iPad pictures and his multicamera moving landscapes. Every theatrical event we attend is now lit by pre-programmed computer technology. Many films and television programmes manage magically to combine realism with technological fantasy to transport us to an extraordinary and brave new world—and indeed, to worlds beyond our own.

We must concentrate on the young and the underprivileged in our efforts to educate, and to spread the digital word. Opportunity to learn is such a gift. With it we will transform the lives of so many, allowing them to share in the magical cornucopia of experience that digital technology and the internet offer. The next generation will transport us in ways that are unimaginable as we sit here today. Why, we might meet in virtual reality, thus solving our current problems of housing during repairs and rebuilding.