The Unedited Podcast

The Unedited Podcast

Byrichard

There was a time when I wanted to listen to hours of podcasts a day, and I did. I would listen on my walks, on my commutes to work, while driving and more. I would love listening to podcasts so much that I would wish I had more time to spend on listening to podcasts. That, unfortunately changed, as podcasts became livestreams, and thus unedited.


Too Long For Casual Listening


It’s not that I don’t like listening to people talk, but that when a podcast goes from being fourty five minutes to an hour long, to being one and a half to two hours long then it becomes too long for a walk, and too time consuming to listen to more than one podcast a day. It gets worse. The problem with This Week in Tech, and that entire network of podcasts is that by being unedited they waste our time. Instead of getting tech news we get personal stories. Instead of analysis and context we get opinion and sidetracked. They used to joke about rat holes. By being live and unedited, when shared as podcasts, they become irrelevant.
Hiking podcasts, programming podcasts and others all make this mistake. The result is that listening to podcasts is less engaging than it was. What makes this worse is that podcasts are sponsored and funded, so as they become profitable they become less engaging for the listener.


Using A Running Order


I was thinking about this yesterday, when listening to a French podcast by France Culture. The podcast was organised, with a running order, various sound bytes. It kept on track and it was about something specific. Podcasts have value because they are specific, because they offer information efficiently. When podcasts get sidetracked they become a waste of time.


What Changed


The first thing that changed is the pandemic. It made listening to normal people have normal conversations, whilst in self-isolation deeply unpleasant. I couldn’t listen to people living “normally” when I felt so isolated due to the pandemic still going on.
The second reason is advertising and promotional messages. When a podcast is young people are talking about the topic they’re about. Eventually, with time, they become about self-promotion and advertising. If you listen to one podcast a week, then that’s fine. I don’t. I would listen to a podcast episode or more every day for weeks. Eventually I burned out on adverts and self-promotion. I have the same complaint about YouTube content. They’re breaking the fourth wall.


Audio Books


Paradoxically the fact that podcasts have become so time consuming and long winded has encouraged me to do two things. The first is to listen to more audio books once again. If I’m going to spend hours listening to something it might as well be a book. I have been listening to The Practicing Stoic, Eye of the Beholder, Journey (by Tony Blair) and The Cult of the Amateur. I find it hard to stick to just one book at a time.


Nature


I also listen to nature. I listen to the sound of traffic, and I walk without earphones for up to an hour at a time. Somehow by podcasters losing focus, I have found the time to walk more mindfully, to day dream, to think and just to be in the moment, in space and time.


And Finally


I am looking for podcasts that are worth my time, that are 45 minutes to an hour long at most, that are worth listening to. Walking without distraction is a good thing, anyway. Walking, in the moment is good.

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Looking Out From The Other Side of the Internet Tunnel

Byrichard

Today I started reading “What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, The Shallows” and I feel that I am on the other side of the experience. I have been through the passion for new content, the passion to constantly write the new things that people write, and the need to be connected.


There was a time when to be connected, to be vigilitant, to be attentive, was rewarded by friendships, meetings in the real world, and at the very least conversations on social media.


These rewards were engaging, and that’s why our attention span was seconds or minutes rather than hours or days. That’s why we constantly refreshed and needed to be active.


Today we are on the other side. This is most clearly demonstrated by the need for current affairs websites to send us notifications. Look at the Apple Watch, look at the notifications pain on your phone. Look at your e-mail account. How many ignored notifications are present?


During the COVID-19 Pandemic I gave up on Facebook because the ROI became so low that it became rewarding not to use the site but that’s a digression.


When you don’t look for notifications you have time to achieve goals. You have the time to learn CSS, to learn one framework, and then another, and then another one after that. You have the time to study on Coursera and much more besides. You also have the opportunity to live in the moment, no matter how void it may be.


I am at just 3 percent read in this book but already I feel that it is a historical artefact reflecting how people felt about technology at one time, rather than how they feel about it now.


Today Google turns 22, and with that I think that Google is a force for good. In their IT support course on Coursera they push that they want to hire a diverse group of people. Google has and always will be about acquiring and sharing knowledge and this benefits society.


Remember how Tim Berners Lee wanted to make computers talk between each other across networks and operating systems? Google is the step after that. Once all the computers are sharing information you need to find a way to find and organise that data. That is what Google has brought to its users over its twenty-two-year existence. Facebook, not Google, makes us stupid.

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Twitter as a way of life

Byrichard

Twitter is not a social network, rather it’s a way of life. The more you use Twitter the further it gets into your way of life. It allows you to follow current affairs, geek out about social media and keep in touch with friends that uses the social network. What’s more it’s a network that does not require any specific device.

At first it’s a confusing place. Look at the public timeline and it’s a torrent of junk and sifting through it will take hours a day. As you spend more time on twitter though you find people of interest to follow. In some cases it’s friends from the physical world, in other cases friends from other websites on the web and then more.

In reality what makes twitter interesting, and part of what makes people use it is how efficient it is at getting a message across. You’ve got 140 characters to express yourself. In Paris I was told I speak in 140 characters or less. That’s not a bad thing. In fact it’s good. It’s about the continual flow of information.

Imagine you’re swimming down a river but everytime you move to stay afloat you have to close your eyes. That’s what article and blog reading is. As you focus on one task so your ability to focus on anything else dissapears. That’s fine in the old media where pages are static and where airwaves are limited.

In the modern world though it is necessary to absorb many sources of information at once. How many of you have your ipod, laptop and mobile phone with you at the time you’re reading this post? I’m sure most. How many of you have more podcasts than you can view or listen to? How many of you have more programs recorded on PVR than you can watch?

That’s why twitter is a lifestyle. It’s about constantly looking for information and building an understanding of current affairs through constantly taking in little bits of information. Stop talking about the social media on twitter, rather start talking about the good old fashioned time efficient soundbyte. Want to be heard. Don’t take people’s time. Encourage interest instead.

Many people are complaining about the decentralised conversation, the notion that blogs are no longer the center of attention, that twitter, friendfeed, facebook and others are killing the conversation. In fact quite the opposite is true. If you’re in New York you’ve got one set of people, if you’re in London you’ve got another. if you’re in Geneva you don’t have much… To have a decentralised conversation means that many ideas can be explored at once and as pillars of the online community meet at various events so the conversations can once more converge.

Don’t worry about comments on a blog, think about the conversations and the people you’re having them with. That’s where the fun is to be had.