Someone asked the other day  what I thought telephony/VoIP/internet phone had to do with media and entertainment content. In the strictest sense, the two seem like separate businesses with little crossover (save ownership in some cases). But the boundaries are shifting with increased access to free or cheap voice communication over the internet paired with the spread of broadband and improved audio quality. More commercial content providers are incorporating some form of telephony or audio chat, including  video games with live voice interaction. The lower price barrier enables global collaboration and with it more creativity and collaborative content. For instance, numerous podcasts include VoIP interviews or co-hosting from multiple locations, unthinkable for most at land-line or mobile long-distance rates.

I don’t agree with the enthusiasts who say that voice makes everything easier. Time shifting by email has its place, as does communicating by IM (particularly useful during conference calls or situations when audio would be difficult or inappropriate). And, face it, it’s still not foolproof. But  integrating voice into the internet — in media and entertainment, in business, in personal communications  and preferably in meaningful ways — carries powerful possibilities. 

I’m an RSS addict and pusher — it makes management of certain kinds of
information so much easier — but I’m not sure I want to live in an RSS
world where everything is weighted the same and context can be
elusive. It’s like the difference between libraries that bring books
to you and those that let you roam through the stacks. Sometimes, I
want that one book and I want it immediately. Most of the time, I want
to wander, trusting instinct and serendipity. 

This
morning I went offline and took some newspapers (we still get four delivered)
to my favorite bakery and oatmeal provider,
where I wish they’d install WiFi and often appreciate the lack of it.
I battled the wind  to sit outside, eat and read the papers, picking up bits
and pieces that probably wouldn’t have been in view otherwise. Could I live without them? Yes. But I often gain something — story ideas of my own, a sense of current culture, news outside of my usual realm. One of my favorite scenes in "Working Girl" is when Melanie Griffith’s character explains how she concocted a deal by playing mental hopscotch with published articles. Sure, you might get the same inspiration from collated, aggregated feeds but that sense of juxtaposition is much more elusive.

Similarly, looking at someone’s web site can be more rewarding than the streams of copy flowing through my RSS readers (Usually Feed Demon and Bloglines). I can see images, text, design coming together, a holistic look at someone’s personal space. I get a glimpse of how a public company treats its responsibilities to shareholders by how hard it makes it to find  information or whether earnings make the site’s front page.

It’s probably the same part of me that believes songs have a certain kind of resonance as singles but a different kind altogether as part of an album with songs placed by one another for particular reasons. Recent proof of that theory: Grey Seal on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road a few songs after "Funeral For A Friend" and "Candle In The Wind" provokes an entirely different, uplifting feeling for me than it does paired with different songs on the remaster of earlier album Elton John . I can — and do — mix my own playlists but some songs can’t be separated from their original company; splintered, Springsteen’s Nebraska, for one,  loses power.

RSS offers its own serendipity of my choices mixed together. But  information management alone would be a pretty spare diet for me.

Coda: I firmly believe if you  read USA Today’s  Life section at least three
times a week you’ll be conversant in pop culture even if you never turn
on a tv, something too many editors claim as a badge of honor. Editors who followed
that prescription wouldn’t have been caught off guard when Kurt Cobain
committed suicide. I don’t know why but it doesn’t  work the same online; in fact, of all the papers I read both in print and online, USA Today is the least satisfying electronically.

Tags: RSS media