Podcasters Across Borders: Context is King

Podcasters Across Borders
Kingston, June 23, 2007

Context is King: Re-examining Conventional Wisdom for an Unconventional Media
by Arthur Masters

narrowcasting: pulling a file from a site rather than broadcasting; this is what allows for podcasting

a lot of podcasts talk about creating a podcast, so listening to podcasts primes you for creating a podcast. As soon as you have the tools to listen to it, you also have the tool to create it. This is like a meme; it is viral - the message has the information for passing on the message.

Marshall McLuhan
Noam Chomsky
Douglas Rushkov (Rushkoff?) - futurist - Media Virus (1993)

This has created a micronization of markets. Incredible diversity with no focus - not everyone are computer geeks, music experts, radio junkies. So specific that some cannot hold an audience of more than 30 listeners, but this is okay.

Wired magazine when it first started - anti-big business, cutting edge. Alvin Toffler wrote for them; not just a sports channel, but a sports channel for every sport. He seems to have been able to describe the environment we are living in now.

People are doing it out of passion, not for money. Not out of a sense of duty, but a sense of fulfilling a need in our media.

Chris Anderson - The Long Tail - democratization of distribution - living the socialist dream. Carl Marx - doing away with currency

Anderson is not a futurist, but does a good job of describing where we are right now. He is editor in chief of Wired magazine.

We have left the information age for the communication age. Linking blogger to blogger, podcaster to podcaster. Things are more word of mouth. We have entered the age of referral. Part of owning the means of production.

In the past, everyone had guitars in their garage. We have a new level of production.

We are hard-wiring ourselves for a network, almost a “neural” network. We are slowly laying a network by which we can communicate, affect the world. E.g. Oprah says she likes pashminas, and every woman between 35 and 55 has a pashmina a year later. We are participating in the collective wiring.

Timothy Leary - instead of being high on LSD, being high on the Internet [did he really say this?] - it is an expansion of consciousness.

It is “hot” in McLuhan terms.

Don’t just produce podcasts--revel in the moment! You are doing something new and really exciting. Stop and think about how far we have come.