The Audio Revolution
alexdanco.com
alexdanco.com
In particular, I find the idea that audio requires less interpretation than text to be counterintuitive, considering how often song lyrics are misheard. Sound is often played at a low volume as background. Transcripts or subtitles are often needed to find out what people really said.
But perhaps this is just my poor hearing? It's a good point that it depends on the audience.
Poor hearing is a technical fault, one that can be fixed by e.g. upping the volume or speaking more clearly, and thus shouldn't infer discrimination in cool/hot category.
Poe's Law[0] basically states that it's impossible to decipher sarcasm on the (text-based) Internet without a clear indication of intent. The same can hardly be said for speech, or it basically misses its point. I believe that is the author's intended discrimination between "cold" and "hot" media.
I still think of speech as very lossy. In ordinary conversation, you need a lot of back and forth to clarify what you're saying and make sure that the other person heard you. Consider how easily mistakes can be made ordering food over the telephone, which is why it's standard to repeat the order back to you. There are also special alphabets used by pilots and the military to avoid mistakes transmitting information.
I'll understand both people and know that the response doesn't follow what was just said by the other person, but then the other person will respond in kind with something equally or more ... non sequitur for the lack of a better word.
Then I think, "How many times have I, myself, been in such a conversation?"
How much of what someone is saying to me do I think I understand but really didn't? How many times has someone said to me, "You aren't understanding what I'm saying." and I say, "No I get it!" But I don't.
And then what do I do in that situation? I used to say stuff like, "Wait a minute, you are talking about Looper and you're talking about Inception and you both think you're talking about the same movie."
But then I just decided to let them talk and not worry so much about miscommunication. It seems like such a high percentage of communication that I realized it doesn't really matter. Talking to someone isn't about communicating ideas, it's mostly about the comfort of having someone to talk to.
Likewise, podcasts, youtubes, etc are more about the background noise than they are the content.
People just don't want to feel alone.
There might be an interesting article to be written about the unique intimacy of listening to podcasts and talk radio on headphones or alone in your car, but in this case it feels like the author is still just getting their thoughts together.
But it does feel like it's missing a summary - it's kinda cool, you might say.
Here's one: Mainstream application of headphones has made people think "hotter" more often (and that is the revolution).
That surprises me. Do you have a source?
From surveying a bunch of podcasters, I've found that typical audio-only podcast episodes posted to YouTube have very little engagement compared to the same content distributed as a podcast.
(Note that some podcasters can show you good "View" counts, which increment even if someone listens for just 30 seconds. But when you look at detailed analytics it seems like YouTube is an ineffectual platform for audio, and that it's probably a net negative on your audience if it's usurping even a few potential podcast subscribers.)
No, I don't, but I second the request. Finding that on the internet is tough ("youtube videos composition" yields... well, not what I'm looking for).
I'm inferring it from the 500h/min new video upload rate on YT, and having made content myself. As soon as something needs editing or cutting, your efficiency takes a dive.
On second thought, it could also be a lot of screen recorded (e.g. game stream recordings) that contributes to that number.
But rest assured, anything that's just point, record and upload will (usually) far outweigh anything that's point, record, edit and upload. Maybe I'm just bad at it, but editing a 1h videos takes... well at least 1h (most of the time), because you also have to view the content itself, when you edit.
I just can't get behind this. Instagram, to my eye, conveys very little novel information. I tried it for a bit, but found myself gravitating to screenshots of Twitter, and other text. Photographs don't, to my thinking, convey much information. Instead, perhaps, they inspire recollection. They are a cool medium, and I think Susan Sontag's theory in e.g. "Regarding the Pain of Others" reflects this. If the image can be _used_ by politically cynical agents to achieve polar-opposite propaganda goals, then what information does the image inherently carry? Little.
> Cool sensory perception and cool media are low in engagement but high in participation. We are operating in gap-filling mode: doing relatively little engagement with the media (we’re only pulling in a low-resolution sample) but a lot of participation with the media (we’re actively filling in the gaps ourselves, and operating in feed-forward mode).
I struggle with the attempt to juxtapose, as opposites, the near-synonyms of "engagement" and "participation."
"$NewThing changes $allthestuff in $notsogood ways, so we should go back to $oldthings from $previousbettertimes."
Is a perennial journalism favorite.
I think the categories McLuhan used are too limited to describe the media we have now. They conflate user participation with information density and with intensity of attention. Just too many things to represent with 'hot' or 'cool'.
[intro]
[summary]
[long discursion about fundamental concepts or personal story]
It's aggravating, I wish there was a "Skip Intro" button like Netflix has for TV series.