Isn't this totally the wrong way of looking at this? Music written in 2015 is not necessarily better than music written in the 18th century, sure. But the musical world of 2015 is incomparably richer than that of the 18th century, because we have access to most of the best of their music, plus most of the best what has been written since, in a dizzying spread of recordings made in the last 90 years.
Technology is exactly the same, of course. You'd be hard pressed to say the new innovations of 2015 beat the new innovations of, say, 1980. But we still have everything from 1980, so the cumulative effect is progress.
>But the musical world of 2015 is incomparably richer than that of the 18th century, because we have access to most of the best of their music, plus most of the best what has been written since, in a dizzying spread of recordings made in the last 90 years.
Having access to past artifacts is not the same as producing equally good things (or ever better). Accumulation is not the same as progress.
Besides having access doesn't guarantee listening to it. If tons of people listened to the Beatles in 1965 and today we have access to their catalogue, but 90% listens to inferior crap, does it still count as progress?
>Technology is exactly the same, of course. You'd be hard pressed to say the new innovations of 2015 beat the new innovations of, say, 1980.
It's not about innovations. It's that today we can build a computer 2000000x times faster, better graphics etc than an 80s computer.
But we cannot write something vastly better to Homer or Plato, or compose something vastly better to Bach (or even merely better).
Technology is exactly the same, of course. You'd be hard pressed to say the new innovations of 2015 beat the new innovations of, say, 1980. But we still have everything from 1980, so the cumulative effect is progress.