A HearThis.com Blog
We love audio. Here's the why, how and what of Internet audio. By Dave Evans, Margaret Harrist and Brian Massey
Audio is a multi-tasker's medium.
Audio, including podcasts, is somewhere between a hot medium and cold medium, as Marshall McLuhan described them, but it’s definitely not luke-warm. I’m surprised that Pip Coburn didn’t mention audio in his interesting article Digital Natives Multitask? No Way! I think the problem is that audio is considered an analog technology.
I think it’s important that Pip says “Digital Natives” multi-task, and not that the digital medium allows multi-tasking. We all consume media in analog mode, regardless of how it’s delivered. Before we were talking on the cell phone in the car we were listening to the radio. Is the distinction between these two activities that talking on the cell phone is more productive or that it’s delivery is digital?
Finally, Pip was multi-tasking while monitoring the audio track Almost Perfect. Radio, cell phones, movie soundtracks… doesn’t audio seem to have a special place in the multi-tasking arena?