
The Audio Revolution - jger15
https://alexdanco.com/2019/10/17/the-audio-revolution/
======
skybrian
To me this underscores how the same medium can be used in a wide variety of
ways. The medium is not destiny. Saying that each medium occupies a single
point on a scale didn't make much sense when McLuhan did it and still doesn't
work very well.

In particular, I find the idea that audio requires less interpretation than
text to be counterintuitive, considering how often song lyrics are misheard.
Sound is often played at a low volume as background. Transcripts or subtitles
are often needed to find out what people really said.

But perhaps this is just my poor hearing? It's a good point that it depends on
the audience.

~~~
klingonopera
Music and speech are two separate domains according to McLuhan (or the
article?).

Poor hearing is a technical fault, one that can be fixed by e.g. upping the
volume or speaking more clearly, and thus shouldn't infer discrimination in
cool/hot category.

Poe's Law[0] basically states that it's impossible to decipher sarcasm on the
(text-based) Internet without a clear indication of intent. The same can
hardly be said for speech, or it basically misses its point. I believe that is
the author's intended discrimination between "cold" and "hot" media.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

~~~
skybrian
The use of sarcasm is basically artistic expression and speakers are often
intentionally ambiguous. There are different techniques for being clear versus
ambiguous depending on which medium you're using, but this is still largely
under the author's control, not inherent in the medium.

I still think of speech as very lossy. In ordinary conversation, you need a
lot of back and forth to clarify what you're saying and make sure that the
other person heard you. Consider how easily mistakes can be made ordering food
over the telephone, which is why it's standard to repeat the order back to
you. There are also special alphabets used by pilots and the military to avoid
mistakes transmitting information.

~~~
anon1m0us
I've lost count of the number of times I've been listening to two people talk
to each other and they both have no idea what the other is saying.

I'll understand both people and know that the response doesn't follow what was
just said by the other person, but then the other person will respond in kind
with something equally or more ... non sequitur for the lack of a better word.

Then I think, "How many times have I, myself, been in such a conversation?"

How much of what someone is saying to me do I think I understand but really
didn't? How many times has someone said to me, "You aren't understanding what
I'm saying." and I say, "No I get it!" But I don't.

And then what do I do in that situation? I used to say stuff like, "Wait a
minute, you are talking about Looper and you're talking about Inception and
you both think you're talking about the same movie."

But then I just decided to let them talk and not worry so much about
miscommunication. It seems like such a high percentage of communication that I
realized it doesn't really matter. Talking to someone isn't about
communicating ideas, it's mostly about the comfort of having someone to talk
to.

Likewise, podcasts, youtubes, etc are more about the background noise than
they are the content.

People just don't want to feel alone.

------
CharlesW
The author seems like he can't decide if it's an audio revolution, a podcast
revolution, or a headphones revolution. He doesn't make terribly interesting
arguments for any of those, then kneecaps himself in various ways (like adding
YouTube to the revolution, because hey, video has audio too).

There might be an interesting article to be written about the unique intimacy
of listening to podcasts and talk radio on headphones or alone in your car,
but in this case it feels like the author is still just getting their thoughts
together.

~~~
klingonopera
Concerning YouTube, he does have a point though. In terms of raw mass, the
amount of "audio"-videos outweighs actual videos, i.e. videos intended to be
consumed because of their audio content, e.g. vloggers who just look at the
camera and talk about stuff.

But it does feel like it's missing a summary - it's kinda _cool_ , you might
say.

Here's one: Mainstream application of headphones has made people think
"hotter" more often (and _that_ is the revolution).

~~~
CharlesW
> _In terms of raw mass, the amount of "audio"-videos outweighs actual
> videos…_

That surprises me. Do you have a source?

From surveying a bunch of podcasters, I've found that typical audio-only
podcast episodes posted to YouTube have very little engagement compared to the
same content distributed as a podcast.

(Note that some podcasters can show you good "View" counts, which increment
even if someone listens for just 30 seconds. But when you look at detailed
analytics it seems like YouTube is an ineffectual platform for audio, and that
it's probably a net negative on your audience if it's usurping even a few
potential podcast subscribers.)

~~~
klingonopera
> _That surprises me. Do you have a source?_

No, I don't, but I second the request. Finding that on the internet is tough
("youtube videos composition" yields... well, not what I'm looking for).

I'm inferring it from the 500h/min new video upload rate on YT, and having
made content myself. As soon as something needs editing or cutting, your
efficiency takes a dive.

On second thought, it could also be a lot of screen recorded (e.g. game stream
recordings) that contributes to that number.

But rest assured, anything that's just point, record and upload will (usually)
_far_ outweigh anything that's point, record, _edit_ and upload. Maybe I'm
just bad at it, but editing a 1h videos takes... well at least 1h (most of the
time), because you also have to view the content itself, when you edit.

------
rexpop
> Instagram: warm. The main content being communicated is all visual, and you
> don’t need to understand genre conventions as much. Instagram in its early
> photo filter days was fairly hot media, as is classic photography, but it
> cooled down when it became the de facto social status app. Now there’s
> interplay between what’s posted and how many likes it gets, and from whom,
> and other social dynamics like private versus public posting. There is still
> some ambiguity, but as a medium it’s more information-complete than Twitter
> or texting.

I just can't get behind this. Instagram, to my eye, conveys very little novel
information. I tried it for a bit, but found myself gravitating to screenshots
of Twitter, and other text. Photographs don't, to my thinking, convey much
information. Instead, perhaps, they inspire recollection. They are a cool
medium, and I think Susan Sontag's theory in e.g. "Regarding the Pain of
Others" reflects this. If the image can be _used_ by politically cynical
agents to achieve polar-opposite propaganda goals, then what information does
the image inherently carry? Little.

> Cool sensory perception and cool media are low in engagement but high in
> participation. We are operating in gap-filling mode: doing relatively little
> engagement with the media (we’re only pulling in a low-resolution sample)
> but a lot of participation with the media (we’re actively filling in the
> gaps ourselves, and operating in feed-forward mode).

I struggle with the attempt to juxtapose, as opposites, the near-synonyms of
"engagement" and "participation."

------
hprotagonist
I swear i’ve been reading versions of this essay since about 1985.

~~~
noonespecial
I'm pretty sure it goes back way farther than that.

"$NewThing changes $allthestuff in $notsogood ways, so we should go back to
$oldthings from $previousbettertimes."

Is a perennial journalism favorite.

~~~
klingonopera
The article doesn't read like that at all. There's no lament of new
technology, it's a pretty neutral take-away on the development of it, viewed
under the spotlight of McLuhan's theories and without much judgement.

------
prvc
If any medium is "hot", it's Twitter. I think he misunderstands the concept.
It has nothing to do with bitrates. Watching a video at 5000 vs 10000 kbps is
not a fundamentally different phenomenon.

~~~
spython
Except that Twitter allows and fosters interaction and participation, which
makes it, at least in that regard, cool.

I think the categories McLuhan used are too limited to describe the media we
have now. They conflate user participation with information density and with
intensity of attention. Just too many things to represent with 'hot' or
'cool'.

------
rhizome
I'm about done with these blog posts that have the structure of

    
    
        [intro]
        [summary]
        [long discursion about fundamental concepts or personal story]
    

There are relatives of this, from recipe blogs (the originators), to
programming ("OK, before I tell you how to install Python, let me tell you why
Python exists"), to, well, I guess pretty much everything. The transformation
of howtos into whatis'es is related to the spammer's mentality that "if
someone gets something from it, it's worth it."

It's aggravating, I wish there was a "Skip Intro" button like Netflix has for
TV series.

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Dylan16807
The description of skimming along because you already know it as "high
participation" doesn't make any sense.

------
HocusLocus
This is a bunch of feels, no technical content.

~~~
dang
" _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
vcavallo
what does your comment teach?

~~~
dang
Moderation comments teach the intended use of the site.

------
overcast
And yet no one seems to care about audio quality, so I'd argue it's more of a
design revolution than an audio one. Most music is made uniformly "loud" with
dynamic compression, and sounds like ass. As long as your overpriced headphone
is flashy, and you can hear some semblance of the song, it seems to be OK for
the vast majority.

