phyllostachys 67: Minute Tech 52 Show Transcript

52 - Is Your Voice the Best Communications Medium?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 52 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Monday, December 17th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Twitter Takes a Break, & Pew Spews Percentages;
- Is Your Voice the Best Communications Medium?
- Minute Tech Blog Seeks Redesign.

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Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA. "Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

And:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Twitter, the popular short-form blogging community tool which allows posts of a 140-character maximum per post and encourages people to set up "friends"communities of like-minded (or not) individuals, took a breather earlier this morning by taking the system down for a few hours to do maintenance of some sort. This maintenance is a follow-on to a Saturday evening maintenance which apparently didn't take the system off line at all. Even so, frequent twitterers were nervous about both downtimes, as the following comment testifies to:
Twitter user G-Man posts the following as a comment on Twitter's blog:
By the updated comment I'm presuming you mean twitter will be back about 3am PST. So about 1 hour from now.
Arggg, I never thought I'd miss twitter so much.
With users such as G-Man being so concerned about such a service, I think it's time Twitter considered some monetization possibilities....
In separate news, Ellen Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found the following interesting stats:
36% have searched the web for lost friends, 9% have checked out dating partners online, and 60% are not worried about the amount of info that exists online about them; 47% have searched for themselves and 53% have looked up an acquaintance. As for the social networking crowd, 61% say that their profiles are open to anyone, and 38% say that they restrict profile access to friends only.
Ms Lee ends with the following: "In light of recent recommendations that job hunters not post photographs or personal information that could hurt their chances with employers, 11 percent said they have searched online for someone they were about to hire or work with."

Tech Question: Is Your Voice the Best Communications Medium?

The communications medium of choice since the dawn of time, or since homo sapiens have been interacting, has been the human voice. Long have men wooed women, parents taught their children, intellectuals argued the finer points of existence, story-tellers told tall tales, leaders cajoled their followers, followers adored or grumbled about their leaders and children played with their sticks and stones to emulate the actions of their parents, all with the power of vocalized sounds and words.

The oldest written texts come originally from spoken, or oral, traditions. Homer's Illiad and Odyssey are examples of poems which originated as spoken, or sung, verses crafted by story tellers in a particular method to allow for memorization of the basic facts and on-the-spot recitation of the narratives. These two stories are probably compilations of various stories heard by Homer and/or his predecessors about the Trojan War, the actions of the Trojans and Achaians (the Greeks) and the hero Odysseus...and of course common knowledge of the pantheistic deities that so colorfully inhabited the pre-judeo-christian mindset. Homer and his poems are from about the 8th century B.C....and the Trojan War seems to have taken place some 3-500 years earlier, around 1100-1300 B.C.

The writings of Plato are based upon the spoken "dialogues" of his teacher Socrates. The famous, or infamous, if you're worried about Socrates' ability to corrupt the minds of your young people, Socratic Dialogues were verbal discussions which Socrates developed to work through specific thought problems. These arguments and discussions were only written down later by his student Plato.

To this day, we look for primary information sources from religious, political, business and cultural leaders who speak directly to us - through speeches, sermons, discussions and story-telling. Is the human voice the best communications medium?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

When next you see the Minute Tech blogger web page, you'll see that the colors have changed, but the format looks the same. I'm beginning a long-term project to augment the page beyond it's plain-looking interface. I'm checking with friends about their suggestions, and even Twittered on the subject to see if people have suggestions of other Blogger users who may have done interesting things with their blogger interfaces - Blogger is Google's free online blogging platform, with about two dozen modifiable templates for UI design.

The blogs of the two friend I've asked are Lyrique Tragedy and The Mac Muse.

Check them out, and let me know if you have suggestions.

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- Twitter Takes a Break, & Pew Spews Percentages;
- Is Your Voice the Best Communications Medium?
- Minute Tech Blog Seeks Redesign.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis