When I think of it, I feel like Golum in Lord of the Rings. I’m not sure how I could live without it.
Justine got it for my birthday a few weeks ago and I’ve been downloading podcasts ever since. Podcasts are digital radio shows that people create and post online. You can find thousands of different subjects like hiking, music, comedy, politics, science fiction, and technology just to name a few that I’ve searched.
(By the way, the word “podcast” is marketing in its purest form. Internet radio broadcasts have been around for years. I remember listening to internet radio broadcasts in graduate school in the late 90s, but since the iPod didn’t exist, nobody had a cute name for the broadcasts…other than internet radio broadcasts. And that’s not very catchy, right? Then the iPod came along and all of the sudden we have “podcasts.” Thus ends my marketing rant.)
Anyone can create podcasts. That’s the beauty of the internet. And if they’re good, people will begin to spread the word. Word of mouth just tends to spread a lot faster and farther on the internet than in your home town.
In a matter of a few years, the iPod (and digital music players in general) will replace the CD player. It’s already starting to happen. Today, CDs are to MP3s (and digital music in general) as cassettes were to CDs 10 years ago. They’re slowly waiting to die.
As soon as the music industry figures out how to handle digital distribution (as Apple has already figured out with iTunes) the last shovel of dirt will be thrown on the CD grave.
And MP3s won’t be around forever either. Eventually some new format will come along and replace it. But the new format will most definitely be digital. Probably just more efficient. Smaller. Better quality. Cheaper.
To paraphrase Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash. “Someday we’ll be able to ship North Dakota to New Zealand for a nickel.”
Although he was speaking more literally in that quote, in a sense, we’re already there. Today I can send billions of bytes of data from North Dakota to New Zealand for free. Completely and utterly free.
Welcome to the future.
-Dave
P.S. – Oh yeah, did I mention I love my iPod? She even got me a rugged case for it too.
