Blogging continues to fascinate me on both the technological and the social levels. I noticed an article in Wired News this morning titled Bands Embrace Social Networking. Apparently lots of musicians, from indies through established bands, are using MySpace’s music section to self-publish, bypassing the radio stations and MTV. Add to this the rise of podcasting and it is abundantly obvious that we have turned a significant corner in the usability of technology.
It’s been a decade since the web started to exist outside universities and a few high tech companies. During much of that time, it has been possible to self-publish everything from words to audio and even video but only recently has this really caught on at a personal level. What changed? Cheap software that isn’t just easy to use, it’s downright trivial to use.
The pieces are finally coming together so that everybody can “use” self-publishing technology. Authors can “write” their stuff, whether it is written words or spoken words or music, using inexpensive software that runs on pretty much any computer. Readers and listeners can “get to” that stuff with widely available and portable tools. For instance, I can write this blog on any computer or WebTV or laptop anywhere in the world. Likewise, you can read it just about anywhere. If I chose to podcast, you could listen to me on an internet-connected computer or on a portable music player that is darned near as simple to operate as the transistor radio that I had when I was a kid.
The whole system of technology has gotten easy enough to use that it is out of the way. Authors can focus on creating. Readers can focus on enjoying the content. The focus has shifted from the technology to the content (where it belonged all along).
My father was a real sport when it came to technology. He graciously let me drag him through email’s infancy. We tried MCI Mail, CompuServe, and a few other nooks and crannies of the nascent net. Though we enjoyed the exercise, it was a long time before we could focus more on the content of the message than on the gee-whiz factor of how the message was transmitted.
Now that anyone can publish their “stuff,” we have no shortage of “stuff” to read or listen to. Once upon a time, in the dark distant past (about ten years ago), we thought that the possibility of 500 satellite TV channels was overwhelming. That ain’t nothin’ compared to what has snuck up on us. How many blogs are there in the world? How many podcasters? How many hours in a day do you have to devote to reading blogs and listening to podcasts and watching vblogs?
The Key Questions
As a content consumer, what pieces of this newly available content will you choose to access?
As a potential author, what do you have to say that someone else might want to hear? Will you choose to share your thoughts? In what form?
