6 ms·

The Audio Revolution

59 points by jger15 7y ago

prvc 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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'.
- rexpop 7y ago
  No one on YouTube ever linked me to a Syllabus, but that happens on Twitter all the time.
temolisp 7y ago
So podcasts are the perfect media to spread discrimination?
hprotagonist 7y ago
I swear i’ve been reading versions of this essay since about 1985.
- noonespecial 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
- skybrian 7y ago
  It's based on the arguments of McLuhan, who was active in the 1960's.
HocusLocus 7y ago
This is a bunch of feels, no technical content.
- dang 7y ago
  "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 7y ago
    what does your comment teach?
    - dang 7y ago
      Moderation comments teach the intended use of the site.
robdachshund 7y ago
What is this, a Malcolm Gladwell article?
CharlesW 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    > 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 7y ago
      > 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.
skybrian 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.
overcast 7y ago
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.
rexpop 7y ago
> 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."
rhizome 7y ago
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.
Dylan16807 7y ago
The description of skimming along because you already know it as "high participation" doesn't make any sense.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

59 points by jger15 7y ago

prvc 7y ago

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 7y ago
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'.
rexpop 7y ago
No one on YouTube ever linked me to a Syllabus, but that happens on Twitter all the time.

temolisp 7y ago

So podcasts are the perfect media to spread discrimination?

hprotagonist 7y ago

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

noonespecial 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
skybrian 7y ago
It's based on the arguments of McLuhan, who was active in the 1960's.

HocusLocus 7y ago

This is a bunch of feels, no technical content.

dang 7y ago
"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 7y ago
  what does your comment teach?
  - dang 7y ago
    Moderation comments teach the intended use of the site.

robdachshund 7y ago

What is this, a Malcolm Gladwell article?

CharlesW 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  > 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 7y ago
    > 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.

skybrian 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.

overcast 7y ago

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.

rexpop 7y ago

> 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."

rhizome 7y ago

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.

Dylan16807 7y ago

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

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]