Long time reader, first time commenter. I read the article on wired, and thought it was an interesting idea, but I'm not convinced on the specifics. I know it is really difficult to compress a large amount of scholarship into a speculative short article, but is the central analogy between the renaissance and the current moment close enough to make useful predictions?
For instance, the Republic of Letters did not merely influence the way people talked to each other. Presumably, it had a more profound influence on the written word. But text en masse was an emerging phenomenon, and thus more susceptible to founder effects. Perhaps the Republic of letters did not influence existing modes of communication so much as it won the war for a new, and vitally powerful, medium.
It seems to me that podcasting itself will never be as directly influential a medium as the written word; it just does not compress information sufficiently. So in this counter interpretation, the question then becomes: will intellectual podcasting help shape new media, or only influence old ones?
Podcasts, parasocial relationships, and the birth of the Enlightenment
Long time reader, first time commenter. I read the article on wired, and thought it was an interesting idea, but I'm not convinced on the specifics. I know it is really difficult to compress a large amount of scholarship into a speculative short article, but is the central analogy between the renaissance and the current moment close enough to make useful predictions?
For instance, the Republic of Letters did not merely influence the way people talked to each other. Presumably, it had a more profound influence on the written word. But text en masse was an emerging phenomenon, and thus more susceptible to founder effects. Perhaps the Republic of letters did not influence existing modes of communication so much as it won the war for a new, and vitally powerful, medium.
It seems to me that podcasting itself will never be as directly influential a medium as the written word; it just does not compress information sufficiently. So in this counter interpretation, the question then becomes: will intellectual podcasting help shape new media, or only influence old ones?