Episode 70 - Centralizers vs Extremists and an Ode to the Podoverse
I look at the woe’s of social media and YouTube today, and discover that similar problems have occurred throughout history. Covering the rise of radio in the 1920’s and 1930’s including Fascist orators and federal intervention of radio in the 1930s, Cable News Fights, the FCC worried about explicit content in the 1990s and 2000s.
Finally, I compare the truly decentralized universe of podcasts - the podoverse - with the tech-giant run social media systems like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and why their business models, and the complexity of running such systems have led to internet malaise while at the same time a golden age of podcasting commences.
Links
New York Times: The Making of a YouTube Radical
The FCC Fairness Doctrine
Father Coughlin (wikipedia)
NPR: The First Radio Commercial
FCC Fines on Howard Stern
Andreas Antonopoulos on YouTube (my Bitcoin/Blockchain recommendation)
Urban Dictionary: Poe’s Law of the internet on not being able to tell the difference between parody and reality
Related and Mentioned Episodes
Episode 69 on Content Distribution in the 21st Century. This episode continues on this theme.
Episode 67 on Human Rights Abuses in China and Causality Myths
Episode 43 on Self Driving Cars and the Cycle of Innovation. Looks like a comparison can be made between the ramp up of radio and the ramp up of the internet.
Episode 41 with David Pietrusza on the History of Communication Tech and the Presidents
Episode 37 with Naomi Brockwell on Bitcoin
Episode 5 with Christian Lundkvist on Ethereum
