We’ve moved on to an "information culture," a "software culture," or a "service culture," or whatever it is. But it’s not really a culture of big machines anymore. We think of them as relics. And yet we still live with the biases, assumptions and beliefs that come out of this age. We are filled up with these ideas in our schools, through our newspapers, our televisions, our music, art and literature.

  One of the personal discoveries I made while working on this project is that we’re a lot less "modern" than we think we are. For the most part, we’re living and breathing in a new world, while thinking and feeling in an old one. We need to "take stock," to become aware of our predjudices and biases, before we can take the next step.

  So my attempt at "taking stock" has been to write music evocative of this period in our history. I’ve tried to write music that draws a lot from the Romantic composers. I wanted to be able to sympathize with those who feel the romance of the factory. The beauty, the power, the possibilities of the machines that would change the world.

- David Byrne, February, 1991