From Patrick Richie comes this post tieing together the winning of the X-prize and podcasting:
Podcasting and private space travel aren’t about doing something new, people have been doing both for decades. It’s about allowing a whole different class of people to participate in the process. And that is precisely what makes both so cool.
The fact that anyone with a net connection, a microphone and the desire to do so can have his own Radio show is more than just awesome it’s historic, and the results are awesome too…
Well said, Patrick. It’s not about the fact that “I can read a weblog faster than I can listen to it”, its about about the fact that for no cost, vast numbers of people are suddenty empowered to do what before only the gatekeepers could. I absolutely can’t wait for the next phase when new and previously unconsidered forms of programming come about.
Poets publishing their spoken works via podcast? Candidates making all their stump speeches available? Shows like This American Life making the raw interviews that go into their programs available for “remixing?” Someone like Brad Sucks, rather than just posting links to the fan remixes of his songs publishes them via podcast? Historical societies interviewing the oldest members of communities to capture recollections before they disappear and making them available? Some brilliant but crazy shit so far out there that I can’t even conceive of it? I hope so! I long to be astounded by what comes next.
Perhaps I’m too pedantic and literal, but why do people insist on calling podcasts “radio shows”? In my mind it has nothing to do with being a <i>radio</i> show. (Conversely, some radio shows, eventually, will also be podcast).
Gordon, that’s to be expected I think. People think of new mediums in terms of the old, which is just the way it works. For some time, that will just be the mental box that it gets filed away in. “This is the thing that is much like radio shows.”
I’m trying to relax my own pedantic impulses on this stuff, trying to focus on the battles that matter. It’s hard, though, because I want to fight them all but there just isn’t time.