Podcasting
In case you haven’t heard, podcasting is the new big thing. Podcasting is when you are able to get bits and pieces of “radio” — basically any audio, but mostly spoken word — over the web to play offline, perhaps in your iPod. The key thing is that anyone can create these broadcasts. Combine it with the distribution capabilities of RSS, and you are on to some really interesting possibilities.
In the same way that the old reality of “freedom of the press only applies to those who can afford a printing press” is meaningless in a web-ified world, the people are no longer captive to those with broadcast towers and FCC licenses.
What’s the third word in the new company’s name? Oh yeah, “Voice.” Interesting.
This is starting to get some pretty good buzz, mostly led by Dave Winer, a former fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center.
Jeff Jarvis explains Podcasting’s significance far more eloquently than I can.
As does Doc Searls.
PODcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well.
