Seven Generational Ruminations

The Internet and Podcasting was supposed to create a widely level playing ground. Anybody with an ability to record and produce digital audio or video could set up shop as a podcaster. Armed with a small set of digital media production tools, and a web site, one could produce their own equivalent to a radio program, air their own ideas, and stand on their own virtual soapbox and tell the world whatever is on their mind. The iTunes service makes it real easy at the consumer end of the spectrum.

I just listened to an National Public Radio piece that presents one mans concept of utopia. Namely, individuals or small scale organizations working on small scale work projects.

There's this current story about massive snooping into telephone conversations by the NSA. The NSA and CIA and other spy agencies are supposed to turn their efforts on targets outside the U.S. but under Bush Administration edict they've been working inside the U.S., in opposition to U.S. law. Yes, the President has been breaking the law.

The conduct of the U.S. Administration is that this is not a war on Terror, but instead a war on Personal Freedom.

I started using Mac's a few years ago as an anti-vote against the evils of Microsoft. As a longtime professional geek, it seemed that OS X as "Unix with a pretty face" with high quality web and multimedia applications was the perfect system for me. Especially as they offered zero virus problems (spyware hadn't been unleashed yet, but Mac OS X also has none of them either) and zero hassles with strange quirky incompatibilities.

So far it's been fine but for one thing. Apple's focus has moved squarely to the iPod market.

In my previous posting I talked about how listening to podcasts does not require owning an iPod. All you need is software that receives podcasts, such as iTunes. It's a kind of incorrect name to call it a podcast, don't you think? Anyway, I started to discuss how to find and subscribe to podcasts, and then realized it would be better to cover that in a separate posting.

Last night I was listening to some Chris Pirillo podcasts and something he said several times really grated on me. The idea is that the only way to listen to a podcast is by using an iPod. But, that's not required, and my proof is that I'm not using an iPod to listen to podcasts.