About 25 years ago the grumpy professor Neil Postman wrote an influential book called "Amusing Ourselves to Death", Part of his contention was that people now have lost the capacity to listen, absorb and engage with large serious chunks of information presented verbally. Conditioned by the magic lantern of movies and TV, people's attention spans are shorter and they want everything presented as snappy, fast-cut entertainment.
With the Internet now there is a constant flood of "content" pouring through the pipework - amusement as "information". Smart people are thinking up smart strategies to manage the flows so that they can keep on top of all the "information" - so that they can drink at the fire hydrant without drowning in all the "information" - latest updates about which latest gadget has totally transformed everything again this week, which hot new opinion is a must-read, which video has scored X million hits on YouTube, what's the latest must-think thought.
All that information pulsing through the web has certainly helped me earn my living over the past 15 years but it's also kept me strapped to a keyboard and fixated on a screen for far too much of my life. However the Internet that enslaves also provides liberation. What I love most about the Internet is what I get through it when I'm away from the keyboard and the screens: podcasts.
In a world gone crazy with scanning "content" for key words and images and gobbets of information, rushing breathless past what is now in a frenzy for what's next presented in bite-sized chunks, pandering to our neurotic mania for MORE, FASTER, NOW, good podcasts give us the opportunity to take things at the speed of human speech; they invite us to engage critically with unfolding ideas and arguments, rather than speed-shopping for them; they challenge us to raise our game and become more intelligent rather than merely faster; with no need to provide eye candy, they allow us the pleasure of tuning in to voices - the subtle nuances of pitch, timbre, rhythm and pace.
I've been raving about podcasts for several years now but today's paean was prompted by discovering Chicago Public Radio's wonderful The American Life. If you need your "information" short and snappy, don't bother. If you need jingles and puns and other little tricks to hold your attention, it's not for you. Every week TAL takes around an hour to explore a subject in rich depth, with real-life stories professionally researched and presented by intelligent adults: Unconditional Love, Toxic Assets, Cry Babies and hundreds of others that I look forward to hearing. It's a gold mine. It makes me proud to be an intelligent adult. It makes me appreciate living in 2010, where I can hear a well-crafted piece of radio from another country and several years ago while I do the dishes.
Tuesday 16 November 2010
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