Legume Pulling
For some reason this morning the podcasts of “In Our Time” and “The News from Lake Woebegone” that I listen to on Thursdays at gym ran a bit short. They got me through the actual workout sixty plus stretching time plus a couple of sets of therapeutic strength exercises but they ran out just as I was starting my cool-down. Not that a morning of near freezing conditions outside and a combination of inefficient environmental plant and organizational management required much in the way of temperature lowering. Say rather decreasing heart rate back close to where it was when I walked in and moderating blood flow pattern in the process.
I have found this process works rather better when I am distracted from the unpleasant signals of the several parts of my body if I am distracted during this period of simple track walking, especially since track walking – indoors – is an activity only practiced by seniors at this facility and then with some derision from the education mafia and the weight lifting primates. Since music tends to be as often stirring as relaxing, I opted for a short podcast, in this case one of “Future Tense”. [Link] This particular podcast dealt with the future of podcasting which, given that the vehicle was itself a podcast, led me to expect a certain amount of unctuous self service. I was not incorrect in my expectation.
The term podcasting is an intriguing one to me. Being a Southron born, bred, and raised, a pod is leguminous and generally has contents that are multiple, which seems rather at odds with a podcast in that it usually consists of a single thing although perhaps the multiplicity is in the sentences uttered or even ideas offered? Alternately, after numerous years dealing with the military service of the Yankee republic I also associate the word pod with a thing attached to an aircraft but not ordnance. Since this thing is usually itself a container the idea of a pod as a container of information things does have some coherence. I must however admit to thinking of pods as green in color after spending time in my youth removing peas from pods as a food preparation chore.
I have a bit more problem with the word casting. The word to me has to do with motion, specifically throwing, although that throwing may be positive or negative. The latter arises in that a shadow is cast by not throwing photons where the shadow is. But because my father was an ardent recreational fisherman when I was growing up, casting is most strongly associated with that activity in my mind.
So we come to the point where podcasting may be associated as container throwing. The container part makes sense in that the podcast obtains its complete value when it is received in its entirety, and that entirety is different from a wireless (or television) broadcast in that the entirety is bounded not temporally but by a count of bits or bytes. The casting part suffers however in that from a logistic standpoint podcasts are not “push” but “pull”. Regular wireless (or television) programs are “pushed” in that they are thrown out and I am free to catch them as I will. Podcasts however are “pulled”; I tell a software client to go out and check for new particular podcasts, and if there are new, pull them into my computer. So podcasting is not so much about “casting” as about “drawing”. So perhaps a better name would be poddraw?
The Future Tense program had several tidbits about podcasts. As of now it is considered a niche market although 6.5E+07 are projected by 2010 CE. Sadly how that number was arrived at was not elucidated. There was also some discussion of the matter of advertising. Obviously my first thought was that if advertising in newspapers is called advertising, and advertsising in wireless and television programs is called a commercial, then what is advertising in a podcast called? I then recalled that under certain conditions a fungus may prey upon some legumes, a condition that is unseen until one opens the pod to remove the peas and finds instead a rather noxious fibrous growth. Perhaps then we should call advertising in podcasts ergot?
This of course led me to consider again how these things get measured? How do they know how many people listen to a podcast? And how many are impressed with the advertising and buy the product as a result? Surveys?
But the factoid that was the most telling was a comment by the moderator that while he downloaded about fifty podcasts a week he listened to only a few and seldom with any sort of regularity or order. This led me to consider the nature of podcast listening as opposed to podcast retrieval.
I should comment that I was unsurprised by the factoid of podcast reception being a niche market. Of all the people I know, only about half have MP3 players although I have noted a bit of a steady increase in the last couple of years, both in numbers and in the spread of the demographics. When I observe at gym, all of the young people and the education mafia have them, almost none of the weight lifters use them, which leads us to wonder if weight lifting requires such concentration or this is merely some statement of the intellectual prowess of those who lift weights? And about half the seniors have them but I should comment that since the other populations seem saturated this is where the change is.
It is apparent that the young people are listening to what they consider to be music; the volume they use assures a leakage from their earbuds. But what about the adults? My questions indicate that the education mafia primarily listens to music, and the seniors to a mixture of music and eBooks, the latter obtained from the public libraries. Most have no idea what a podcast is much less how to obtain one. Nor do they show any interest in general. Hence, a niche market and if Nawth Alibam is any indication, a long way to go to that 65 million.
I do not evangelize podcasts much. Only to those I also know have some minimum degree of computer literacy. The challenges of finding a podcast accumulator that suits – iTunes is as useful as a scuba suit in a shower – getting subscriptions into it and the dealing with its vagaries to get podcasts onto one’s computer are not something I offer to someone who thinks using Outlook and Word minimally is literacy. And the challenge of getting the file from computer to MP3 player awaits.
But I do find myself with a bit stronger regularity than the moderator of Future Tense. I tend to listen to the same podcasts on certain days although not always in chronological order. “In Our Time” used to put the date in the podcast title so that they would be arrayed on the MP3 player chronologically, but this year the podcast title is a title and achronological – and I listen to the one on the top of the stack.
There is also some variation. The BBC cobal take holiday in the late summer so there is a period of a couple of months when there are no “In Our Time” podcasts (e.g.,) and thus I have to substitute. But in general find myself more regular than the moderator. Alas, however, with two data there is no way to tell what this implies about the actual statistics of the podcast listening public. And, of course, I should note that the bulk of my podcast listening is in a regular setting and not very ad hoc. Occasionally I shall listen to a podcast in my automobile or while at work but seldom as the former requires much connection of power bricks and RCA cables while the latter is a distraction from the podcast and I retain little thereby.
