October 11, 2005

Podcasting

I'm kind of unimpressed by podcasts. They have been touted for many reasons, most of which aren't very revolutionary. The idea of putting spoken-word audio (i.e., a radio show) on an iPod to listen to later is not particularly novel. The real revolution, if there is one, lies in the feeding of the podcasts. Streamlining the process of getting that audio onto your iPod or other digital music player, letting it be something that can happen passively, is a real improvement over the alternative, but even so this phenomenon strikes me as just the modernization of a practice that has been going on for a long time, with nothing seriously new added.

Taping video or audio for later viewing/listening has been going on for several decades, in some form or another. The digitization of the process makes it easier (automatic, even) to do the recording, but I don't see how the new distribution channel substantially changes anything.

Posted October 11, 2005 02:08 PM. Categories: Reading Responses , Week 5 | Permalink