This man is amazing.

As a technology medium, Television is something that’s hard to pin down. The simplest way to describe it, is that it’s a medium that transmits audio and images together. But as The Verge article explores, the technology was hard to grasp at first. People didn’t understand what it could be used for, or what it could potentially be used for. From it’s early conception of a “telephonoscope”, to visual telegraph, to visual radio, the medium was a tough sell in it’s early history. And even today we’re having a hard time giving it a specific definition.

We live in a time when it’s hard to define what television is precisely. Is television defined by the device you’re watching it on? Is television defined by the length of a certain piece of visual media? Am I using television if I chat with someone through a TV screen over the internet? The thing is, it’s always been that way. The history of the future of television is particularly messy because no one at any given time has been happy with defining exactly what it is.

My hunch is that in the future, thinking of media as different categories like print, radio, or television, is going to be silly. The networked computer is already starting to make that happen. For example, the idea of a Television as we have known it doesn’t matter any more. What is a Television in a world with Netflix and YouTube? The device in itself is starting to matter less and less. It’s just a screen. The content that we put in it is what’s going to matter.

The message is the medium. Take that, McLuhan.

*Post title is a reference from a scene from Back to the Future were Marty McFly tells Milton Baines that has already seen a brand new Honeymooners episode from a rerun.

*McLuhan believed that the particular content on a medium didn’t make a difference. The medium was the thing the really was affecting you in some way, and not the particular content. Thus, the medium is the message.

Being ignored on the web is like being a bum holding up a cardboard sign, seeing everyone pretending to not see you. It really is not a good feeling. Who ever says that they don’t write for an audience, and just do it for themselves is just lying. They’re lying to themselves. Because you don’t have to publish things to the public in order to write. You can always write and no one has to see what you write. But the job of being a writer doesn’t work that way. Writers need readers and vice versa. Writers literally need readers in order to make a living off it.

Feedback on blogs don’t have to be with just comments. That’s not what I’m exactly asking for, though it could help. Comments on blogs as a feedback mechanism is hotly debated. Getting linked to, or just getting more traffic can be more than enough feedback for me. But getting absolutely zero activity doesn’t help. How can you know how good you are? How can you know how much you suck? If a blog falls in the giant woods of the web, does it make a sound?

Remember when television was dismissed as a passive medium? I do, and every time I write a next-day review of a new episode, I grin as I recall those bygone days. Watching TV used to be a mindless experience to be shared with only those in the room (often just oneself); thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, it has become a group activity, practically a hive mind.

It’s a good read, but I don’t buy the whole premise of social media changing Tv viewing from passive to active. In any case it’s more of a way of being “alone together” than anything. Not that I don’t enjoy doing a search for what people say about a show I like, but I prefer to do that after I finish watching it, specially if it’s a show like Mad Men. And more people just say that they’re watching the show, Get Gluing it or whatever, than adding any interesting commentary.

(Via The Verge)

Full album in 8-bit. Boner. Huge one.

via MeFi

Ted Harbert, the chairman of NBC Broadcasting, struck a similar note at his network’s presentation on Monday, calling the Dish feature an insult to the television industry. “Just because technology gives you the ability to do something, does that mean you should? Not always,” he said.

Clearly these people have their head up their asses.

via @siracusa

Had to post this.

via Kottke

I always had Radiolab as a podcast to check out, but it wasn’t until I read Ira Glass’s appreciation article for Transom.org, that I was finally convinced to check them out. Ira Glass’s article is long but worth reading in its entirety. I’m going to take the liberty though of summing up the main points of the article.

A Science Show that doesn’t sound like a science show.

Ira Glass explains that one reason people don’t watch shows like, say, PBS’s Nova is because it talks down to you. The tone is always “I’m talking to you in a big official voice. I’m talking to you like a grownup who’s teaching you something.” Radiolab is a show that avoids that as much as it can.

Science through Slick Storytelling

The reason you get interested in listening is not because of the particular scientific topic. You’re interested because they give you a well crafted story. You’re discovering along with them what is it about X topic that’s interesting.

The Sound and The Music

Take the Words episode for example. (Words by the way is not just my favorite Radiolab episode, or just my favorite podcast episode, it’s my favorite thing ever. It’s the best piece of media I ever been exposed to in my life.) The topic is language and how would it be to live in a world without it. The episode’s first story is about a 27 year old man, that was born deaf, that discovers “that everything has a name.” The build up to this realization, the sound effects used, and the voices of children in the background spelling out words in the end… I get chills just thinking about it.

The genius of Radiolab is how well they understand and use the medium of radio. They’re not using narrative like a story you read in a book. The narrative is the “of the cuff” conversation they have. They’re not being journalistic where all the setup is them asking questions and letting an expert answer them. All they do is tell the best story they can with just audio.

So first we will get a Steve Jobs biopic that will most definitely suck with the Kelso guy. But at least there’s hope.

It turns out Sony has brought in the big gun to pen their rival flick, as Aaron Sorkin is now set to pen the screenplay.

I know that suggesting the they should team him up again with David Fincher would be too obvious, but just picture Steve Jobs in the lotus flower position while “Closer” by NIN plays in the background.

Clay Shirky: What I Learned About Creativity By Watching Creatives from Piers Fawkes on Vimeo

In this talk Clay Shirky takes a look at five student projects to highlight the many facets of creativity. Some of the projects are just plain fun, but with no apparent practical use. Like the mud that changes color when you play with it. Others are serious like the project that reunites people with their families. And others are in between. But what they all have in common is what Shirky calls valuable novelty.

via Boing Boing