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Ask HN: Why is there a disproportionate amount of interesting text vs. spoken content?

8 points by bemmu ↗ HN
I find it very easy, perhaps too easy to fill hours every day reading very interesting articles online. Then when I want to go outside for a walk, I would prefer to continue listening to similarly interesting content. I've found I take a lot longer walks if I'm engaged with an interesting podcast.

But there is a great divide here, it took a lot of digging just to find a few good podcasts (Stack Overflow, Venture Voice and Radio Lab), but they provide me less than 2 hours worth of content each week. With text, I wouldn't even be able to keep up with all the interesting content out there.

At this point I am fairly confident I have found most of the stuff I might be interested in listening to, so my interest now is to understand why more is not being produced, and if there is anything we could do to encourage production? Is there no demand for this? Are programmer types too shy? Why doesn't for example Steve Yegge just read aloud his blog posts and make them iTunes-subscribable?

13 comments

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GeneralMaximus
There is more than one reason.

* Many Internet users surf the web from their workplace or from public computers. Listening to audio in these settings, even with headphones on, is very difficult. This drives down the demand for audio. Heck, most people never even bother listening to audio when it is available, preferring to read through the transcripts instead.

* As a rule, anyone smart enough to be listening to programming podcasts can read faster than the podcaster can speak.

* Producing an engaging podcast takes more effort than writing an article. After all, you wouldn't want someone to just read out an article to you, would you? We expect more than just words from audio. A podcast would have to be scripted carefully to make sure it's engaging.

* Most geeks are excellent writers, but boring speakers.

* Text is searchable, audio (as of now) is not. How much metadata can you tack on to an audio clip, anyway?

* You can skim through text to see whether the content is worth reading or not. Skimming through audio is not that easy.

* Text allows more anonymity than audio.

It's not that people don't like podcasts. Audio is just too inconvenient a medium for most people.

helium
It's easier to organize thoughts clearly when writing. Once you have said something it's already been broadcast. You don't have a chance to go back and revise, restructure or edit the message in any way.
m_eiman
Most probably write down what they're going to say in a script, but then they've already written it down and can be done by copy-pasting that text into a blog..

Seems to me like audio content is added work that doesn't provide many benefits, at least for this sort of prepared content. Audio is more useful when recording spontaneous conversations.

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davidw
The only thing I can really stand to listen too much is the audio version of The Economist.

Mostly, though, I think long walks (or better, bike rides!) are better for listening to what's going through my own head. I'm bombarded by enough information as it is. Other than that, "GeneralMaximus" sums things up nicely.

kesava
Marti Hearst of Berkeley has written on this topic for Edge.
shalmanese
If you're restricting yourself to audio only, you're missing out on a bunch of interesting videotaped lectures that you can listen too without missing out on much. Check out the entire @Google series on Youtube or a bunch of interesting documentaries or TED talks.

I've written about how to run video in the background on an iPhone: http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/running-videos-in-the-backgrou...

theblackbox
I'd recommend the "Off the Hook" podcast by Emmanuel Goldstein and the HOPE recordings available for download via the 2600 website

don't really do podcasts much myself, though. But these did keep me mildly entertained/informed a while back (esp. the HOPE conference about coupon hacking)

J_McQuade
I think it's just a lot easier to 'iterate and improve' on a piece of text - to do the same for a podcast would basically reduce it down to reading from a dry script, leaving it likely even more boring, regardless of how interesting the subject matter is.

Of course, the easiest way to make a programming podcast both interesting and entertaining seems to be just to get Simon Peyton-Jones in it ;).

Hexstream
Audio: Sequential access, list.

Hypertext: Random access, graph.

This has huge implications.

jwr
Producing audio shows is not easy -- it seems everyone can do it, but the really good ones are made by people who formerly worked for radio and TV stations.

You might want to try the TWIT podcasts (http://twit.tv/). I'd call them easy-listening tech shows.

jodrellblank
I know a 7 day old post is ancient by hb standards, but have you seen librivox? It's a website of community contributed readings of non-copyright texts/books.