The Song Decoders By Rob Walker

What activity does the writer has to engage in creating the text?
The writer engage in the activtiy of  sitting at computers and listening to songs, and rating those songs element by element.

Then the author developed an idea which is" your music consumption habits are partly shaped by the curtural information that Pandora largely screens out. And is it really possible to seperate music taste from mutiple social factors?"

I think the writer is putting the studies and tests to the Pandora to find out the writer's musical taste. And then the result is connected to the social factors(like peer relations). Then he got an idea which is part of what we liek is based on the cultural information. And the personality characteristics are associated with the kind of music that people like. And it is also connected with larger factors.

The mechanism of the decoder makes people to test it, then the process of testing the Pandora is being arranged to the idea that -----what we like is partly based on the cultural information.

I think the writer is trying to argue that the factor we love music is not based on ourselves but it is more based on the people around us---they make influence on us, and many other factors that around us. He wants to argue that those factors are still not enough to explain the reason that why we will "like" a type of music or a song.

The wiriter provides an example about the genome that Westergren has developed tons of methods to pay attention. The problem is there are too many songs in the world so it will be a big big work to analyze .