Posted: December 1st, 2009 | Author: Dan Misener | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bob stein, clay shirky, internet, on the media, Radio, spark | No Comments »
What are the major consequences of internet on society and culture? Perhaps it’s too early to tell.
Clay Shirky, on last week’s episode of Spark:
If you had gone to Germany in the mid-1470s and said, let’s see what this printing press is doing, right, you would miss novels, you would miss newspapers, you would miss the rise of scientific publication, you would miss Martin Luther’s “95 Theses,” you would miss the Venetian publishing industry. So many of the changes brought by the kind of abundance created by the printing press were in the second 50 years of its existence, if not the second century of its existence, that I think that over-extrapolating from current trends would leave us in the same position as if we tried to do the printing press in 1473.
And Bob Stein, on last week’s episode of On The Media:
Here’s a wonderful sort of factoid which may be helpful: The Western version of the printing press is invented in 1454. It takes 50 years for page numbers to emerge. It took humans that long to figure out that it might be useful to put numbers onto the pages.
Or, as management-types like to say, “It’s early days.”
Posted: August 25th, 2009 | Author: Dan Misener | Filed under: CBC, Radio | Tags: CBC, on the media, Radio, spark, transcript | No Comments »
Bruce Melzer on why NPR.org makes transcripts of its radio stories free online:
There are solid business reasons for making transcripts free. Sales have been dropping over the years. As people search for, discover and share content, offering free transcripts will boost the traffic to NPR.org, traffic that can be monetized with sponsorship. Finally, search engines like text. Many of our stories could not be found by the search engines because they did not have enough text. Now it will be easier for the search engines — and ultimately the users — to find and enjoy NPR’s stories.
On the Media from WYNC puts transcripts of all of its interviews online, and they’re extremely helpful. It’s something we’ve tried on Spark, and would like to do more of. And, as Julien Smith says, “the web is built around text, not sound.”
Update: My pal Rhiannon makes another excellent point:
i like when radio puts up transcripts. it’s really useful for me if i’m listening to something, say on a morning show (especially pre-coffee), and i’m like “wow! this would be great info for my/ someone else’s research!!” listening to the radio is great, but to be able to pass the info along to others (or save it for myself) who can use it at a later time is really useful from an academic’s perspective. i wish cbc did more of this all around.