On Podcasts

Do you like them? If we are entering a post-literate culture, perhaps podcasts will be the way we get our information and our entertainment?

I can see the value of being able to listen to an interesting geeky political podcast while commuting, say, but to me the podcasts have a serious flaw: Listening to them takes much more time than reading the same as a written text, and life is short, short.

Unless the ear is offered something extra: emotional nuances, perhaps, the extra time requirement isn't worth the trouble for me. But that's just me, and I'm sure that other people have very different views on podcasts.

The reason I write about this is of course that I have been told that I should do podcasts, and I'm lining up my reasons for refusing.