In early April, I posted about Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn, who wrote a column saying that he was going to continue to tell the truth about Donald Trump, even when it offends those who are paying for information. Dan Froomkin has an excellent interview on PressWatch with Chris Quinn, including more on how Quinn took a long time in writing the piece, and opinions on the national news media and how editors are afraid. It is a good read!
April 2024
The joy of podcasting
Over the last few weeks, I restarted recording some short podcasts while I drive home from work. It was fun to do, and I decided on the last one to not do any post-processing or edits, and thought it sounded ok. WordPress automatically creates an enclosure, so anyone could subscribe to my podcasting (of my 3-5 regular readers). My “kit” consists of my Samsung A10 smartphone, the Voice Recorder Android app, and a Logitech H111 headset that plugs into the speaker jack of my phone – that’s it! That’s all that it takes to record the podcast. And, of course, anyone can use any podcast app to listen to the episodes. As Anil Dash said in a post earlier this year commenting on the “wherever you get your podcasts” line, “radical systems can survive and even thrive in the modern world of tech and media. They can inspire new creators to make similar systems that are unowned, uncentralized, and a little bit uncontrollable.”.
To close, I recently listened to a Radio Open Source podcast episode focusing on the life of Hannah Arendt, who lived under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the 20th century. One line of her writing stood out to me: “We are free to change the world and start something new in it.”. I think that every podcast is a chance to change the world, and anyone is free to create one and send it out into the world. Thank you, Dave Winer, for making this possible.
An example of semaphore using email
Earlier this week, I commented on Ken Smith’s inquiry into the use of semaphore for communication, noting that I felt his interest in the use of semaphore was to inform people in case of a crisis. This morning, I received an email alert from the Americans of Conscience Checklist. This group sends email on a regular basis with selected actions to promote progressive issues (I am a subscriber). In this email alert, (called a “time-sensitive” action), subscribers were asked to call US senators to ask them to vote “No” on the FISA reauthorization bill. I think this fits the “use case” of semaphore that Ken Smith was discussing. The people subscribed to this list have been “trained” to take action on suggested items on a periodic basis, so they would have the necessary reflexes to take action for a time-sensitive request.
But, you may say, “I get emails asking me to do things (“buy stuff”) all the time – what is the difference?”. I think the difference is those emails mostly go unanswered, and the user has been trained to ignore most, if not all of them. If a group has been trained to take action in a certain way, and there is trust in the communication path, then emails like this can have an effect.
I was reading through a set of articles on CNN.com, and got the following message: “You have reached your daily article limit. Continue reading with a free CNN account or come back tomorrow.”. I have NEVER seen this before – has this happened to anyone else?
Some examples of resistance
On April 6, I published a post on “The Resistance” commenting on someone asking where “The Resistance” was. Shortly after after that post, there was a protest in Oregon over plans to log 14,000 acres of forest. This past Monday, my wife told me that there were protesters in Eugene, Oregon blocking the I-5 freeway to protest the Israel-Hamas war. There were also protesters in Hillsboro, Oregon, and later that evening I saw news coverage of multiple protests across the US and the world (see also Truthout coverage (via Denny Henke). The April 15 protests appear to have been a coordinated economic blockade by multiple groups. Looks like there is some resistance going on out there!
PS – see this Instagram post for additional pics
What does “working together” mean?
I read a post by Dave Winer today titled “Working together“. After some recollections about past social networks, his main examples of working together are two discussions he was involved in on the Threads platform. In the first discussion, he replies to someone, and they have a conversation, sharing knowledge. In the second discussion, he is one of many commenters, and it was not apparent to me that anyone replied to his comment.
So – this set of examples are what I would call normal conversations. I would not call it “working together”, but would call it “talking” (no common purpose, no goal, no real accomplishment). Dave says he wants to “crack the nut of figuring out how to work together”. However, at the same time, Dave blocks people who comment on his social media posts. How can you have a conversation (talking) if you block the other person because you don’t like what they have to offer to the conversation? And for calling Chat-GPT “always up for working with you“, that is a laugh. That should be translated as “Chat-GPT always takes my prompt and gives me some response, and I can take it or leave it, or modify my prompt”.
I would offer this post by Colin Wilson from our collaboration on MyStatusTool as a better example of “working together” – and, I would also add, working together with respect, as opposed to this example of working together.
The language of music
This past year, my wife and I resumed singing in our church choir. It was fun to get together with old friends and making music. As we started, I realized how much of a language written music represents. All of the people in the choir are comfortable in reading music, so the duration and pitch of the notes, the rests, all come together in a common, joyful sound. We are all “reading from the same page”, so to speak. Now there can be variation in musical language, just as in computer languages. However, they represent a common grammar, a common ground, where people can come together to create music or software. We are all richer for the experience.
Can the use of semaphore be useful today?
Ken Smith recently wrote about the use of semaphore and RSS in transmitting information. He relates an experience where he organized students to send a message across a university campus. The historic use of semaphore flags was to communicate between ships. In the 18th century, the “optical telegraph” was developed, and messages could be sent from Amsterdam to Venice in an hour. With the development of the electric telegraph, the use of the optical telegraph fell to the wayside.
Today, people can use RSS readers to monitor posts on websites, and use other social media systems (Twitter, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky) to do the same. The rssCloud protocol also provides almost instant notification. I think that the question Ken Smith is asking is “can a group of individuals use this to be able to respond to a crisis“. The answer is “Yes”, but people “would have to be trained to do more than just send or receive a message on the system”.
So – do we choose to do something here? What crisis should we work to avoid?
Knowledge management and organizing information for use
A short podcast on some of my recent experiences on knowledge management and organizing information for use:
Some references from the podcast:
Organizing information for use – A Github repo summarizing writings from Ken Smith on organizing information for use
Link Zettlekasten – My experiment in organizing bookmarks using OPML
Writings on Organizing Information – Frank McPherson list of essays on this topic, this is one on the value of indexes
Op-Ed Links – Source of information on writing op-eds/letters to the editor from Ken Smith
Knowledge management – My collection of knowledge management posts on my weblog
Commonplace book – Wikipedia
Chris Aldrich – Differentiating online variations of the Commonplace Book: Digital Gardens, Wikis, Zettlekasten, Waste Books, Florilegia, and Second Brains
Waste book – think of a “Field Notes” notebook that you capture ideas/info and transfer to something else
Chris Aldrich – Reframing and simplifying the idea of how to keep a Zettelkasten
The end of podcasting, chapter 63
More recent news items this month about layoffs at Chicago Public Media (WBEZ) and Colorado Public Radio, both affecting their podcast units. Key quotes:
The move to terminate nearly 15% of the 62 unionized content creators at Chicago’s National Public Radio affiliate comes amid a worsening financial crisis for the news organization marked by declining fundraising, listenership and philanthropic support.
https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-public-media-lays-off-14-staffers/451b3f28-338c-45bc-98c2-742a7106ecf2
In recent years revenue has grown but has not kept pace with expenses. CPR lists on its website that expenses had exceeded revenue by $1.3 million in fiscal year 2022 and $2.3 million in fiscal year 2023. Member giving has remained strong, but corporate sponsorship was down. Meanwhile, programming and fundraising expenses – driven in part by employee costs – have risen by millions of dollars.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/06/cpr-institutes-layoffs-in-audio-production-podcast-units/
Looks like my analysis from chapter 60 is still accurate:
If an organization is spending more money than it brings in income, they either figure out ways to increase revenue or cut expenses, or say goodbye! The technical term, I believe, is called “business”.
https://andysylvester.com/2023/11/24/the-end-of-podcasting-chapter-60/
On the flip side, an informally produced podcast by Nick Hilton featuring people sharing their experience with Parkinson’s disease has won an award at the Broadcasting Press Guild in London, UK. A nice pull-quote from Nick’s post:
Podcasting has proved the perfect home for Movers and Shakers. It’s allowed us to access an audience of many, many thousands of people who either live with the condition, have loved ones living with the condition, or are fascinated by the banter between some broadcasting legends. It has allowed us to dive into a level of detail that makes people feel seen and heard. These are people who often feel let down by the health service, by their doctors and nurses, employers or benefits assessors. It is an entertainment product, first and foremost, but it’s also a support group. That’s why, despite the fact it’s a technical nightmare, we still record the show down at the pub: so that people feel like they’re having a pint with the gang, joining in with a laugh and a moan, and the sharing in the experiences of living with Parkinson’s.
https://nickfthilton.medium.com/what-an-award-winning-podcast-taught-me-about-podcasting-f83544fd34a7
Perhaps this is a better model for many podcasts that are trying to be money-makers – just sayin….
Postscript: NiemanLab says ” more people are listening to podcasts than ever before” – I guess the advertisers aren’t listening….