Flutterby™! : podcasting and religion

podcasting and religion

2004-12-13 19:33:04.971893+00 by Dan Lyke 10 comments

QOTD, which might capture some of my lack of super enthusiasm about podcasting:

I think this is the first time that religion has found a technology on the Internet before pornography.
— Chris Joffee

From today's edition of Adam Curry's Daily Source Code. How hip and forward thinking can it possibly be?

[ related topics: Religion Quotes Sexual Culture Weblogs Net Culture ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-13 20:24:09.664791+00 by: aiworks

Podcasting very well could lead to the digital future we all envisioned (sans the flying cars)... Ignoring the specific protocol implementation that currently exists, consider this:

People are buying MP3 players by the bushel regardless of podcasting

Audio size vs. network bandwidth is sufficiently compatible

There's lots of content available (music and audiobooks) that people are paying for and, as a result, that's causing much more content to come on-line.

You have an environment in which investors, power users, and early adopters are excited about "premium" audio (such as satellite radio).

You have an environment where time shifted content (a la Tivo) is "sexy."

Connecting the dots:

Podcasting has no barriers to make it out to the public at large because people have computers, MP3 players, and plenty of bandwidth.

Unlike other formats, audio is a content format that can be humanly accessed every conscious moment of the day.

Because of things like satellite radio and PVRs, there's momentum behind the concept that has staying power.

Re: promised digital future. We're talking about intelligent agents running on your PC that load up your personal device with stuff you like from all over the world. That's awesome and it will drag other content formats with it eventually.

There's a perfect storm at work here that's going to cause this to explode in the mass market. I foresee paid subscription services, paid aggregators, individual contributors making real money: a whole new industry. Real companies are going to appear in this space and MP3's through RSS isn't going to be the delivery mechanism as a result.

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-13 23:45:24.572346+00 by: dws

A datapoint in the wilderness. I bought an MP3 player and FM transmitter specifically for listening to podcasts (ITConversations talks) while commuting. That it does music is gravy.

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-14 00:25:15.035402+00 by: Mars Saxman

I hear a lot of talk about podcasting these days but I still have no idea why it is supposed to be cool. As far as I can make out, it is basically the same thing as writing an online journal, without the part where you actually write; but how does it make sense to replace a 1k-2k text file I can read at 1000 wpm with a 1meg-2meg audio file I can listen to at 100 wpm?

The blog-world seems to be all excited about podcasting, but when the blog-world gets excited about something, it usually turns out to be a fancy name for a heavily marketed but technologically insignificant tweak on something people have been doing for years that really isn't as cool as everyone wishes it were.

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-14 05:53:29.832105+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

Mars, the void it fills for me is the time when I'd otherwise be listening to the radio: Commuting, doing the dishes, that sort of thing. Brainwagon audio beats the hell out of Future Tense. And Coverville and the Rock and Roll Geek Show beat the hell out of anything I've got locally on broadcast, and that includes KFOG.

But, yeah, if you compare audio to the text of weblogs it's a totally ridiculous thing. It has to be viewed in a totally separate context, and that's one of the reasons that, say, Dave Winer's efforts at it fall completely flat for me: He's not saying anything that he doesn't say on his weblogs, and he brings nothing to the new medium.

And that's why I haven't done one yet: I treat everything I publish on Flutterby the same way, and once I've written a script for such a recording I may as well just slap text up.

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-14 22:38:48.762134+00 by: Mars Saxman [edit history]

Ahh, hmm, so podcasting : blogging :: NPR : NYT?

That makes it easier to understand why I haven't been able to grasp the appeal, then, since I don't listen to radio either.

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-14 23:13:07.272453+00 by: Dan Lyke

Exactly. Except that podcasting doesn't have links, so NPR is in much more trouble than NYT.

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-15 16:08:15.649921+00 by: Shawn

I'm in much the same boat as Mars (he beat me to the comment), but with the additional that I'm confused about the mechanics of podcasting. I've tried to do some reading/research, but it sounds like this is nothing more than posting a link to an mp3 as the content of a blog post - hardly a revolutionary concept.

I do have a long commute, so the idea of having something interesting to listen to on the bus certainly appeals to me, but I don't have an iPod and I've yet to see a description of consuming podcasts that doesn't involve one. I can work out my own solution for pulling down mp3s and moving them to my Sony Clie, but that doesn't come anywhere near justifying the hype I've been seeing.

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-15 17:47:10.83041+00 by: Dan Lyke

Shawn, the automation is all that's there, and, yes, it isn't much, but the fact that you aren't doing it right now indicates that there's a need for a solution for you, right?

And, yes, it wouldn't be getting all of this hype if it didn't have a fairly gifted PR person behind it, on the other hand that's what's taken the medium from some frankly pretty dull talk formats to a few bits that I'm enjoying listening to. As the comments over on the economic friction thread indicate, sometimes it's the processes that bring attention to the publication that's worth more to us than the underlying content.

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-16 02:02:19.855784+00 by: Shawn

I understand that hype is good for pulling people in and getting them excited about things, but in this ultra-hyped world we live in it frequently has the opposite affect on me. It's not at all uncommon for me to

run away from hype because I'm already over-stimulated as it is
eventually come to "oh, is that all it is?", become disillusioned and walk away

Hype turns me off in the same way that people who are constantly smiling give me the creeps. It just feels so fake/unreal/un-natural. It's also too easy for hype to become a barrier to discussion and growth - at least for me.

#Comment Re: made: 2004-12-16 02:10:41.381786+00 by: Shawn

At this stage, the solution I need is more automation in just getting MP3s to my device. I'm not at a place yet where I'm worrying about where my MP3s are going to come from - right now I haven't gotten around to managing the ones I have (and have access to) effectively enough.

Even if I did have that process in place, I don't see why I would need more than a link [to an MP3 that I want to listen to], but that could be because I still haven't gotten a clear picture of what automation currently exists.