Techlearning blog

Did you know the world just celebrated the centennial of broadcast radio? Reginald Fessenden is credited with the "first two-way transatlantic radio transmission" and the "first radio broadcast of entertainment and music" on Christmas Eve, 1906.

Matt Largey's NPR segment "Marking a Radio Centennial" on December 22, 2006 discussed this historical centennial. Podcasting has really ushered in a renaissance of radio, so it seems appropriate for those interested in podcasting as a media communications form to study "where we came from" as podcast listeners and podcast broadcasters. The terms narrowcast and narrowcasting are applicable to podcasting as well, and helpfully differentiate it from traditional broadcasting. For more on the history of radio and the roots of podcasting/narrowcasting, check out Dr. Jonathan Sterne's presentation at Duke from October 2005 on the subject.

I reflected recently, as I drove from downtown Oklahoma City to my house north of town in Edmond, how radically different our broadcast communications environment has become in the past few years. Podcasting really DOES represent a revolutionary change, a disruptive change, in the way ideas are broadcast and shared around the world. Driving north from Oklahoma City to my house, I pass a large number of towers that I assume must be used by radio and television broadcasters reaching an audience around the state of Oklahoma and other parts of the midwestern United States.

I listened with reflective amusement the other day to a local radio station, running an advertisement that touted their increased station power. They are now broadcasting with something like 50,000 watts of radio power! My thought and question in response to this was, how many watts of power are represented by a podcast channel? No one can say for certain, but my response would be "exponentially more power."

The ability to reach out and touch the minds of others at a distance, separated by both geographic as well as temporal barriers, has been a colossal challenge for most of human history. Overcoming these barriers has also been, historically, an extremely expensive and time consuming proposition. Consider this image of Fessenden's patent for Wireless Telegraphy, filed in 1906 and granted in 1910:

Note it took four years for this patent to be granted. According to WikiPedia's brief history of radio, it wasn't until the 1920s that regular entertainment broadcasts began. Even then, this new thing called "radio" was slow to catch on because people didn't have the equipment to receive broadcasts.

Compare that drawing to my own rough sketch I have titled, "21st Century Idea Dissemination Model (via podcasting)":

The fact that we can and are sharing our ideas via text blogs, but also our words in our own voices via podcasts with a global audience is an incredible sea change in communications history. The dissemination costs for me as a podcaster are the same whether I am reaching an audience of five or five thousand. The power which resides in this communications modality is likely beyond the wildest imaginations of any of us.

I cannot predict with certainly what 2007 will hold, but I am confident democratizing communication technologies (like blogs and podcasts) will continue to transform the ways we access information, share ideas, and perceive the world. These web 2.0 tools permit a growing group of volunteeers, previously "mute" because of their lack of access to the traditional means of publishing and broadcasting, to share their voices and perspectives with a global audience. These are fundamental changes with implications that go far beyond the mundane priorities which likely dominate the daily "to do" lists of most of us. The causes of human rights and self-determination, along with many others, have more potential to be advanced through the diligent work of citizen journalists utilizing these new tools of media publication than perhaps any other communication technologies which preceded them.

Time magazine's person of the year is "You." You now have the power to publish, share, and interact with a global audience. Your students also have this power. The question is, what are YOU going to do with that power in 2007? Ignore it, ban it, and/or pretend it doesn't exist? Or explore, learn, share and grow together with a cast of thousands enthused and energized by the possibilities of digitally-powered global dialog? The power is there if you want to tap it. The decision of what to do with that power lies with you.