Making, recording, and producing rock music is a high-tech enterprise, involving amplifiers, synthesizers, studio enhancements, and truckloads of lights, speakers, electronics, and other equipment for live shows. But that's not the only connection between rock and technology. Technology--together with science, space, and science fiction--are all woven thematically into a surprising number of songs. They Might Be Giants, for example, a New York band with a unique sound, features such sci-tech numbers as "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas," "Particle Man," and "For Science," as well as an album entitled Apollo 18.

TMBG got its start in the mid-1980s, but futuristic, space, and science fiction themes ran through much of the music of the 1960s and 70s. Jefferson Starship, the highly popular group which came out of the San Francisco psychedelic scene of the 1960s and was first known as Jefferson Airplane, transformed itself to a more commercial sound in the 1970's. Blows Against the Empire, which one reviewer on Amazon.com describes as "hippies taking off in their starship and embarking on a voyage of love and peace," was a step in that transition. The same period saw David Bowie's Ziggie Stardust, as well as the Moody Blues, whose melodic sound resonated with its futuristic themes. Bowie not only sang about space ("Space Oddity," "Starman," "Moonage Daydream," etc.) but also starred in the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film, "The Man Who Fell to Earth."

Technology--its negative sides as well as its positive ones, space, science, and science fiction, all continue to inspire rock musicians around the world in the 21st century. The links below provide some starting points for exploring this rich musical literature.

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At the top of the list is Thomas Dolby, whose web site, The Flat Earth Society, is powered by Beatnik, the musical plug-in he invented. Dolby's first hit, "She Blinded Me With Science," is included on his album, The Golden Age of Wireless. Other Dolby albums include Aliens Ate My Buick and Astronauts and Heretics.

The official site of They Might Be Giants is worth a visit, if for no other reason than to see the Flash shooting gallery on the front page. This unofficial site has song lyrics as well as a variety of other goodies.

Vehicle Flips sings an ode to the Honeywell Round Thermostat:

"Essentially unchanged in function and form since 1952
How many things can you say that about that you can still buy new?"

Science and technology are the subjects of many songs by the Toronto-based band, Moxy Fruvous. Some samples: Entropy, Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, The Mitosis Waltz, and You Will Go to the Moon.

The members of the New York band, Life in a Blender, are no fans of Thomas Edison. Listen to the short clip from "A**hole from Menlo Park" on their Album Two Legs Bad in RealAudio on Amazon.com. (You can buy the album there, too, if you still want to after hearing the clip.)

Jefferson Starship's old official site has been "temporarily down" for a while, but there is now a new official site and there are also plenty of fan sites, including this one in Sweden and this content-heavy one on Yahoo-Geocities.

David Bowie's official site and the David Bowie web ring, linking many of his fan sites.

The Moody Blues official site and an "index of Moody Blues resources on the net."

Hotwired has a recent feature on space rock, reviewing albums by such groups as Supernova, Gong, Von Lmo, and Digable Planets. Also in the sci-fi genre, see (and hear) music from the rock opera, "Space Rocker." Apparently there was a "Space Rock Fest" in Baltimore in 1997; I was unable to find any indication as to how it went or whether there have been subsequent fests.

Laika and the Cosmonauts are said by their fans to be the finest rock and roll band in Finland, possibly in all of Scandinavia. Laika, by the way, was the dog launched into space by the Soviet Union in Sputnik II in 1957.

Some of the more basic technologies of rock (e.g., 45 rpm records) are described in the technology section of a site on the history of rock 'n roll.

AT&T (yup, the phone company) has a site called "AT&T Rock," which includes a section on the high-tech Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Finally, there is the ultimate marriage of technology and rock--the Experience Music Project , the super-high-tech interactive music museum located in a stunning Frank Gehry-designed building in Seattle, Washington. EMP, as it is known, is a project of billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen; it opened in June 2000. You can see photos of the museum and a time-lapse video of its construction here.