My prime interest is words, not music ... until I discovered podcasts, I could see no personally meaningful purpose for an iPod. When I did, my jaundiced attitudes to youth-oriented digital gadgetry fell away instantly.
WILD TOMATO MAGAZINE - Dec 2009
As I put on my iPod one morning the dog broke into the pre-walk delirium he normally reserves for when I put on my walking shoes. His tail-wagging enthusiasm was affirmation, if I needed it, that this slim silver device had become indispensable to his life (and more importantly) mine. But it had been a long process . . .
I am after all, a baby-boomer dinosaur who once roamed a largely pre-digital earth. When I was growing up transistor radios were the ultimate in portable sound. Telephones stayed irrevocably attached to the wall. Urgent messages were sent by telegram. We relied upon typists to turn out perfect documents armed with only carbon paper and lashings of Twink. Checking your bank balance meant consulting the last handwritten total in your deposit book. When new technologies began to trickle in - TV, the fax machine, videos - we coped pretty well. But then came a tsunami of technical innovations each smaller and more extraordinary than the next - CDs, DVDs,laptops, mobile phones, Palm Pilots, Blackberries. Some of us were left goggling, not Googling. But most of us recognised the benefits of the new technology and kept our heads above the rapidly rising tide of acronyms, adaptors and outdated software.
I dog-paddled away with the best of them but not always with good grace. In fact I was often downright crabby. A mobile phone is a great business tool but I resented the way its peremptory trilling took precedence over face to face conversations. I hated texting. The auto-complete function never guesses correctly what I want to say and I peck at the miniscule keyboard like an arthritic chicken. I railed against the bastardised language of text in spite of a grudging admiration for the occasional teenage haiku I’ve received. How about the concision of this message - l8t bcuz cr broke pcm? Translation? I’m late because my car’s broken down, please phone me so I don’t have to pay for the call, and get me out of this mess. Ninety five characters reduced to a mere seventeen. Brilliant!
I reserved my fiercest disdain for the digital media player (most commonly the iPod, which commands about 80% of the market). To me it seemed yet another toy created by child-geniuses solely for yoof, or adult joggers desperate for entertainment on long distance runs. I hated seeing blank-faced young people plugged into these little machines. As far as I was concerned, the “i” in iPod stood for incommunicado, inattentive and introverted. I always felt particularly crabby whenever I saw gaggles of teenagers on the street plugged into their iPods, omnipresent cell phones in hand, twittering about Twittering. What a waste of the opposable thumb I thought, resentful perhaps that I couldn’t, like them, walk, talk, text and chew gum all at the same time.
Try as I might, I couldn’t talk myself out of this unseemly irritability. I reminded myself that Generations X and Y were born into a world where portable digital devices were ubiquitous and affordable. They turn to their phones and the internet first for information and communication. For example when the Gen Y son of a friend was having trouble knotting his tie for the school ball, he didn’t ask Dad. Instead he consulted the internet and found a nice little how-to video on YouTube.
I was aware that Gen Xs and Ys don’t consult the Listener the way many baby-boomers still do, hoping that an interesting tune or programme will be delivered to them at a convenient time. They pluck whatever they want to see or hear out of the digital ether, then listen to it whenever they please. They’d think it hilarious that some Dickensian outpost of Radio New Zealand will still post you a cassette tape of a missed radio programme, in return for a $25 cheque. Tape recordings? Cheques? Postal delivery? I knew that these methods of transmitting information and money were as quaint as smoke signals and the Pony Express for anyone under 30.
This much I understood. But I’m 56 and my prime interest is words, not music. The Touch Pod might be “the funnest iPod ever!” but until I discovered podcasts, I could see no personally meaningful purpose for an iPod. When I did, my jaundiced attitudes to youth-oriented digital gadgetry fell away instantly.
It seems that while I had been grumbling away about youth and their ear-candy there had been a revolution. Mp3 files (sorry, we can’t avoid acronyms forever) which had once carried mostly music around the internet was now carrying the spoken word too. Cyberspace had become a dazzlingly varied repository of spoken word recordings which I could dip into at will. There were interviews, lectures, discussions, reviews, stories and commentaries out there by some of the world’s most interesting writers, philosophers, politicians, activists, comedians, designers, architects and scientists. Most of them were free of charge and free of the political and commercial constraints of mainstream media. They were free of advertising too.
The name for this cornucopia and its means of transmission? Podcasting. iPods were for grown-ups at last!
It took a while for the full implications to sink in. At first I was simply thrilled to find that I didn’t need to be awake by 8am on a Saturday morning to listen to Kim Hill. I could use my computer to “subscribe” to the programme podcast, choose the interviews I was interested in and then listen to them while walking the dog after a leisurely breakfast (cue doggy delirium).
Beyond the wonderful convenience of choosing what and when I listened, I soon realised that podcasts have other great advantages. Mass media seems to suffer from ADHD – an endless flitting from story to story. With podcasts however, I could follow news stories over time and get a greater sense of context. I could access alternative voices and points of view.
I discovered that podcasts are great learning tools. There’s a podcast in almost every language, on almost every subject (psychology, meditation, history, philosophy, handbags). You learn at your own speed and because video podcasts are increasingly available, you can watch lessons as well as listen to them – handy if you want to learn yoga or how to play the guitar.
The portability and capacity of Mp3 players (up to 36 hours listening, depending on the model) makes an iPod the ideal travel companions whether you are taking a spin round the block or flying to Kathmandu. They can relieve the tedium of a traffic jam, a flight delay or just a lengthy wait at the dentist. Try a podcast for pain relief. That next root canal might be a lot more bearable if you listen to a podcast while it’s being done.
And podcasts are good for your health. As my dog will testify, podcasts can motivate you to walk further and more frequently and make bouts at the gym almost painless. Even housekeeping is less of a chore if your brain is plugged into a diverting podcast. And if this all sounds way too energetic, you can listen to a podcast for sheer pleasure while you wait for post-menopausal zest to kick in.
I started out by exploring podcasts from the mainstream first, browsing universities such as Yale or Cambridge, or newspapers and periodicals such as The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Observer and the New York Times. Then I discovered that public radio stations worldwide are an amazing resource of subtle, intelligent podcasts. But there’s lots that is quirky and esoteric in podcast land and that’s part of it’s charm. Tango, tantric sex and tatting, craft beer, crows (intelligence of) and cooking – you name it there’s a podcast about it. There’s no easier way to appear effortlessly up to date with the latest books, food, wine, films, theatre and current affairs.
Is there a downside to all this? Well, I have become incommunicative, inattentive and introverted on occasion but I’d like to think that one woman’s incommunicado is another woman’s inquisitive, intelligent interest in the world. And sometimes a podcast is as good as a holiday. Sometimes better. When I walked the Heaphy track during a deluge, listening to podcast interviews with Philip Roth, Jane Smiley, Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood was all that made the cold, sodden slog between huts bearable.
And it’s not as if podcasts are a necessarily solitary vice. You can email a link to your favourite podcast to a friend or create a compilation of your favourite podcasts on CD. If you listen to them on a computer or Mp3-compatible stereo, a podcast can be a shared experience and an inspiration for conversation or debate. Listening to a podcast of an author talking about their writing or reading from their work is a great way to start a Book Club discussion.
True, you’ll need a bit of technical know-how before you can enter podcast paradise but the tools are pretty straightforward: an internet-connected computer, software called a podcatcher, and an Mp3 player.
You’ll also need to know where to find podcasts which will interest you, how to get them onto your computer (a process called subscribing) and then how to transfer them to your Mp3 player. Rest assured that it’s no more difficult than sending an e-mail or banking on-line. The brief jargon-free introduction elsewhere on this page should get you started.
You’ll have to brace yourself for the odd acronyms too but if you know an M.R.I. from an E.C.G. , and P.M.T. from M.M.P. you’ll get along just fine. If you haven’t yet got an Mp3 player you will need to prepare for puzzling verbal exchanges with the teen technocrats at your local electronics shop especially if you don’t speak fluent computerese. Let’s hope you find a cheerful, patient, well-informed young assistant like the one I spoke to in a Richmond electronics shop recently. “Old people aren’t dumb” he explained reassuringly, “It’s just that in their native habitat geeks use a lot of jargon, and they don’t know how to translate it into plain English”.
The biggest challenge might be keeping track of yet another lifestyle accessory. Laptop, mobile phone, reading glasses, sunglasses and car keys are quite enough to manage as it is.
Or maybe it will be persuading the dog that’s it’s not always time for a walk when you plug in those earphones.
I dog-paddled away with the best of them but not always with good grace. In fact I was often downright crabby. A mobile phone is a great business tool but I resented the way its peremptory trilling took precedence over face to face conversations. I hated texting. The auto-complete function never guesses correctly what I want to say and I peck at the miniscule keyboard like an arthritic chicken. I railed against the bastardised language of text in spite of a grudging admiration for the occasional teenage haiku I’ve received. How about the concision of this message - l8t bcuz cr broke pcm? Translation? I’m late because my car’s broken down, please phone me so I don’t have to pay for the call, and get me out of this mess. Ninety five characters reduced to a mere seventeen. Brilliant!
I reserved my fiercest disdain for the digital media player (most commonly the iPod, which commands about 80% of the market). To me it seemed yet another toy created by child-geniuses solely for yoof, or adult joggers desperate for entertainment on long distance runs. I hated seeing blank-faced young people plugged into these little machines. As far as I was concerned, the “i” in iPod stood for incommunicado, inattentive and introverted. I always felt particularly crabby whenever I saw gaggles of teenagers on the street plugged into their iPods, omnipresent cell phones in hand, twittering about Twittering. What a waste of the opposable thumb I thought, resentful perhaps that I couldn’t, like them, walk, talk, text and chew gum all at the same time.
Try as I might, I couldn’t talk myself out of this unseemly irritability. I reminded myself that Generations X and Y were born into a world where portable digital devices were ubiquitous and affordable. They turn to their phones and the internet first for information and communication. For example when the Gen Y son of a friend was having trouble knotting his tie for the school ball, he didn’t ask Dad. Instead he consulted the internet and found a nice little how-to video on YouTube.
I was aware that Gen Xs and Ys don’t consult the Listener the way many baby-boomers still do, hoping that an interesting tune or programme will be delivered to them at a convenient time. They pluck whatever they want to see or hear out of the digital ether, then listen to it whenever they please. They’d think it hilarious that some Dickensian outpost of Radio New Zealand will still post you a cassette tape of a missed radio programme, in return for a $25 cheque. Tape recordings? Cheques? Postal delivery? I knew that these methods of transmitting information and money were as quaint as smoke signals and the Pony Express for anyone under 30.
This much I understood. But I’m 56 and my prime interest is words, not music. The Touch Pod might be “the funnest iPod ever!” but until I discovered podcasts, I could see no personally meaningful purpose for an iPod. When I did, my jaundiced attitudes to youth-oriented digital gadgetry fell away instantly.
It seems that while I had been grumbling away about youth and their ear-candy there had been a revolution. Mp3 files (sorry, we can’t avoid acronyms forever) which had once carried mostly music around the internet was now carrying the spoken word too. Cyberspace had become a dazzlingly varied repository of spoken word recordings which I could dip into at will. There were interviews, lectures, discussions, reviews, stories and commentaries out there by some of the world’s most interesting writers, philosophers, politicians, activists, comedians, designers, architects and scientists. Most of them were free of charge and free of the political and commercial constraints of mainstream media. They were free of advertising too.
The name for this cornucopia and its means of transmission? Podcasting. iPods were for grown-ups at last!
It took a while for the full implications to sink in. At first I was simply thrilled to find that I didn’t need to be awake by 8am on a Saturday morning to listen to Kim Hill. I could use my computer to “subscribe” to the programme podcast, choose the interviews I was interested in and then listen to them while walking the dog after a leisurely breakfast (cue doggy delirium).
Beyond the wonderful convenience of choosing what and when I listened, I soon realised that podcasts have other great advantages. Mass media seems to suffer from ADHD – an endless flitting from story to story. With podcasts however, I could follow news stories over time and get a greater sense of context. I could access alternative voices and points of view.
I discovered that podcasts are great learning tools. There’s a podcast in almost every language, on almost every subject (psychology, meditation, history, philosophy, handbags). You learn at your own speed and because video podcasts are increasingly available, you can watch lessons as well as listen to them – handy if you want to learn yoga or how to play the guitar.
The portability and capacity of Mp3 players (up to 36 hours listening, depending on the model) makes an iPod the ideal travel companions whether you are taking a spin round the block or flying to Kathmandu. They can relieve the tedium of a traffic jam, a flight delay or just a lengthy wait at the dentist. Try a podcast for pain relief. That next root canal might be a lot more bearable if you listen to a podcast while it’s being done.
And podcasts are good for your health. As my dog will testify, podcasts can motivate you to walk further and more frequently and make bouts at the gym almost painless. Even housekeeping is less of a chore if your brain is plugged into a diverting podcast. And if this all sounds way too energetic, you can listen to a podcast for sheer pleasure while you wait for post-menopausal zest to kick in.
I started out by exploring podcasts from the mainstream first, browsing universities such as Yale or Cambridge, or newspapers and periodicals such as The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Observer and the New York Times. Then I discovered that public radio stations worldwide are an amazing resource of subtle, intelligent podcasts. But there’s lots that is quirky and esoteric in podcast land and that’s part of it’s charm. Tango, tantric sex and tatting, craft beer, crows (intelligence of) and cooking – you name it there’s a podcast about it. There’s no easier way to appear effortlessly up to date with the latest books, food, wine, films, theatre and current affairs.
Is there a downside to all this? Well, I have become incommunicative, inattentive and introverted on occasion but I’d like to think that one woman’s incommunicado is another woman’s inquisitive, intelligent interest in the world. And sometimes a podcast is as good as a holiday. Sometimes better. When I walked the Heaphy track during a deluge, listening to podcast interviews with Philip Roth, Jane Smiley, Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood was all that made the cold, sodden slog between huts bearable.
And it’s not as if podcasts are a necessarily solitary vice. You can email a link to your favourite podcast to a friend or create a compilation of your favourite podcasts on CD. If you listen to them on a computer or Mp3-compatible stereo, a podcast can be a shared experience and an inspiration for conversation or debate. Listening to a podcast of an author talking about their writing or reading from their work is a great way to start a Book Club discussion.
True, you’ll need a bit of technical know-how before you can enter podcast paradise but the tools are pretty straightforward: an internet-connected computer, software called a podcatcher, and an Mp3 player.
You’ll also need to know where to find podcasts which will interest you, how to get them onto your computer (a process called subscribing) and then how to transfer them to your Mp3 player. Rest assured that it’s no more difficult than sending an e-mail or banking on-line. The brief jargon-free introduction elsewhere on this page should get you started.
You’ll have to brace yourself for the odd acronyms too but if you know an M.R.I. from an E.C.G. , and P.M.T. from M.M.P. you’ll get along just fine. If you haven’t yet got an Mp3 player you will need to prepare for puzzling verbal exchanges with the teen technocrats at your local electronics shop especially if you don’t speak fluent computerese. Let’s hope you find a cheerful, patient, well-informed young assistant like the one I spoke to in a Richmond electronics shop recently. “Old people aren’t dumb” he explained reassuringly, “It’s just that in their native habitat geeks use a lot of jargon, and they don’t know how to translate it into plain English”.
The biggest challenge might be keeping track of yet another lifestyle accessory. Laptop, mobile phone, reading glasses, sunglasses and car keys are quite enough to manage as it is.
Or maybe it will be persuading the dog that’s it’s not always time for a walk when you plug in those earphones.
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