BurningbirdThere are times when I feel either I will have to give up my career in technology, or give up weblogging–or at a minimum, not write about technology in my weblog, not read about technology in other weblogs; not allow any association between the two.
Luckily, these times don’t happen often, but when they do, I second guess everything I do as a technologist. Then when I’m finished tearing myself down as a tech, I second guess everything I do as a person. It isn’t fun.
My Dad served during World War II. He was in the 82nd Airborne as a paratrooper, and was injured twice while on duty. Through merit and field promotions, he achieved the rank of Captain by war’s end.
During the war, he took flying lessons in Seattle. While he was out on a solo flight, he strayed too close to another plane and almost crashed both of them. He was ordered to land immediately. When he did so, he was informed that he almost ran his plane into the aircraft carrying Eleanor Roosevelt. Needless to say, his flying lessons were cut short.
My Dad did not make history. He is not mentioned in a history of World War II. If he had crashed Roosevelt, he would have made history; luckily he didn’t.
Now, if there was a time when a person was writing an anecdotal history of WWII, then my Dad might make history–his story would add color and nuance to the events of life that surround this war. But his role in the war, and his efforts, important as they were, cannot be seen as a pivotal events. He didn’t, in his individual actions, make history.
That’s how we need to view ‘history’ in Wikipedia–not as an opportunity to be all inclusive; but as an opportunity to be accurate. With this attempt to ‘rewrite’ the history of podcasting, I’m not attempting to be exhaustive in who gets covered; I’m trying to be accurate about what’s covered.
What are the key elements in podcasting without which it would not be as we know it today? Who are the key players who helped create, control, and define it? What are the key events that brought us to this point in time, even if said events weren’t directly related to podcasting? Every entry should be part of an answer to one of these questions. In the end, we should have an entry that everyone can agree is ‘accurate’, and, hopefully, neutral.
Then we can leave the anecdotal information–the fun stories, the chest thumping, the memories, and the expressions of gratitude and admiration–to our own weblogs, articles, books, and podcasts, whichever you prefer.
Or we can tell our daughters over tea one day, about the time when…
This is what happens when two weblog posts get mangled into one, with an aside or two tossed in for good measure.
It does make a nice break from this weekend’s game of Pen the tale on the wonkey.
I can’t stand the Initial Development history section of the Podcasting entry at Wikipedia. It’s horribly written and full of accusations and people’s names inserted just to mark themselves into the story. I was only half joking about editing the section, but I’m not now. I have no part in podcasting so I have nothing to win or lose by what’s listed in the history of podcasting–well, other than it pains me to see the Wikipedia entry as it now stands.
Following is a history, rewritten from the existing entry and taking into account current discussions. I do have a Wikipedia account, and will edit it under my account name (Shelleyp). Let me know critical elements that are missing from this history. Questions about items are embedded and if anyone has the answers, let me know.
What makes podcasting unique from other digitalized audio technologies is the use of syndication feed enclosures to automatically download audio files for those subscribed to the particular feed. The concept of using syndication feeds for this purpose originated with a draft proposal submitted by Tristan Louis, in addition to conversations between Dave Winer, author of the Really Simply Syndication (RSS) format, Adam Curry, and others. To facilitate this functionality, Winer created a new version of RSS, RSS 0.92, adding a new element, enclosure. He demonstrated, publicly, how it would work by enclosing a Grateful Dead song, January 12th, 2001.
The use of the enclosure element to push audio files originally had slow acceptance among webloggers or tool developers. Winer incorporated RSS enclosures into the Userland weblogging product, Radio. Since Radio had a built-in aggregator, it provided end-to-end podcasting support, though the term most used at the time was audio-blog or audioblog.
In June of 2003, Stephen Downes demonstrated aggregation and syndication of audio files using RSS in his Ed Radio application. Ed Radio scanned RSS feeds for MP3 files, collected them into a single feed, and made the result available as SMIL or Webjay audio feeds. In September of that same year, Winer created an RSS-with-enclosures feed for his Harvard Berkman Center colleague Christopher Lydon. In his announcement of Lydon’s audio-enclosure feed, Winer challenged other aggregator developers to support this new form of content and provide enclosure support. Pete Prodoehl released a skin for the Amphetadesk aggregator that displayed enclosure links; not long after.. (Who was the first third party aggregators to provide RSS enclosure support in addition to Pete?)
A month later, at the first Bloggercon held at Harvard, Kevin Marks was invited to demonstrate a script to download RSS enclosures to iTunes and synchronize them onto an iPod. Following, on October 12, 2003, Curry offered his blog readers a RSStoiPod script that would do the same. Curry put his Applescript in open source and called it ipodder, at ipodder.org, and encouraged other developers to build on the idea.
Possibly the first use of the term “podcasting”, itself, was as a synonym for audioblogging or weblog-based amateur radio in an article by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian on February 12, 2004. In September of 2004, Dannie Gregoire also used the term to describe the automatic download and synchronization of audio content; he also registered several ‘podcast’ related domains. His and Hammersley’s use of ‘podcast’ was picked up by leading podcasting evangelists such as Winer and Curry and entered common usage.
I still have to add links, but the text is what I’m planning on adding. Note that this cuts out many of the uses and examples of podcasting, which should either be removed entirely from the Wikipedia item, or moved into the section on popularization, or even a new section on history of podcasting tools and technologies. These are, in my opinion, the key elements of the history of podcasting, without enthroning individuals, and without referencing every person who touched podcasting, or even thought about it from the years 2000 through 2004.
You also will also note that I removed the reference to enclosures being in the RDF version of RSS. This is the history of podcasting, and regardless of what other technologies existed at the time that could implement syndication based subscription and production of audio file enclosures, the popularization of the concept of podcasting began with RSS 0.92. This is a history of podcasting, not syndication and media or streaming and media.
What key critical elements am I missing? Who contributed a significant element to podcasting who should specifically be mentioned by name? What errors have I made?
I’m not worried about the grammar so much, because this can be edited after I add the material. But I don’t want to upload this to Wikipedia and have it form the basis of an edit war because so and so was included while so and so was not. I’d like dialog on this before I make the edit.
Note, when I do make this edit I am aware that yes it can be backed out. That’s the nature of Wikipedia, and especially with contentious subjects, ‘owning’ the history is almost as important as ‘owning’ the discovery. However, note to those of you who want to write yourself into this history: it is contrary to Wikipedia’s procedures for you to edit an entry to add or modify entries about yourself. If you feel an error has been made, or that you have been erroneously omitted, initiate a discussion item associated with the article rather than edit the article yourself.
Or, in other words, as my friend Bud the camel would say: Stop screwing with Wikipedia! You’re really pissing me off!
(What surprises me the most about this article is how many of the people referenced in this entry have a Wikipedia page about themselves.)
Weblogging is replete with Carnivals of this, Bonfires of that — most of which fall on a Friday before all of this gets put into sleep mode. One such I thought is missing is something along the lines of a Carnival of Matinee Movies. These are the movies you saw Saturday afternoons, either in a theater or at home on television.
Saturday matinee movies aren’t just film or cinema–they’re culture. How we are as people is greatly defined by what Saturday afternoon movies we saw with our friends, family, or by ourselves. They didn’t even have to be Saturday afternoons, because the Saturday matinee movie is a state of mind as much as a state of time.
I am not particularly good at starting a meme, so I won’t. Rather than attempting to start a “Matinee Madness”, I’m just going to write about Saturday matinee movies on Saturdays and if folks want to join, they can. If not, no big deal. At a minimum, it’s a change of pace from discussions about Wikipedia, Google, and big-haired bloggers.
Matinee movies differ for each of us. My roommate is partial to westerns, but my Dad favored war movies. Old dancing and singing movies ring other people’s bells, but my Saturday matinees invariably focused on science-fiction movies; usually featuring what I called the Playtex Living monsters.
I’m not alone in being brought up in the tradition of creature features on Saturdays. The SciFi channel seems to have tapped into this with its CGI movie of the week, but with, to me, much less class. Bizarrely enough, I fit the demographics for these types of movies: being a woman over 50 (and therefore to some conservative writers, equivalent to dog food).
I didn’t believe the demographics until I visited my Mom. She loves the SciFi creature features. More, she loves disaster flicks. While there, we watched shows on killer bees, killer locusts, and little nanobots that can eat a human in 3 seconds flat. Humanity dies a thousand deaths, weekly, at my Mom’s.
Mom went to The Day After Tomorrow at the movies twice, and while I was visiting, got into a conversation with her 82 year old neighbor next door about the merits of some kind of disaster flick on NBC. Listening to them, I was reminded of two wine lovers discussing the relative merits of a new wine. Yes, it had a good tension, but it spent too much time getting into the action. Oh my yes, that building falling down was especially good. It became flat, though, in the middle: not enough people squished.
If they do a remake of the Poseidon Adventure, as the rumors go, she’ll be in alt.
(Now, I like disaster flicks, too, but I didn’t like the Poseidon Adventure. The premise was good even if the clothes were awful. But I could have lived with the clothes, and the hair, and even Ernest Borgnine in yet another disaster flick. No, it was the song, you know what song. I still hate that song.)
I, on the other hand, grew up with monsters: from the sea, from space, and particularly from Japan. Yes, this means Godzilla. I loved Godzilla. It didn’t matter that the monsters were fake and the Tokyo looked like it was made of cardboard, or that the tiny little human being stepped on looked like Ken of Barbie doll fame. I loved it when the thing screeched; I loved when it would smash through power lines; and when it fought the bad monsters and would jump up and down with glee, I would join it.
As a consequence, I love Japanese movies that feature Playtex living monsters, no matter how improbable.
Recently PZ Meyers wrote a review of The Calamari Wrestler, a new Japanese flick where the hero, a famous wrestler, reincarnates as a giant squid. PZ, who most likely picked this up because of its giant squid associations (he, like me, is all things Archituethis Dux), started his review with:
I have seen The Calamari Wrestler. It was…indescribable. I won’t even try.
Variety had a few more words:
Funny pic about a brooding wrestler reincarnated as a giant squid is a kind of “Waiting for Godzilla” aimed at the midnight circuit. F/x, amounting to men in rubber suits, is proudly of the Ed Wood school, but tasty tale is served up with a redeeming wink. Quick sketch of Japanese pro wrestling history, couched in terms of island’s postwar identity problems, give extra context to the tentacle-in-cheek sports spoof. Cult suction should ensue, but it won’t see much theatrical ink.
A Japanese giant squid that wrestles–impossible to resist. It is now first in my Netflix queue. I’ll have a review of it for next Saturday’s Matinee Movie of the Week.