If you're at all interested in the transformative/disruptive potential of the internet on established businesses and all our lives then yesterday's BBC In Business programme (8 May 2005) is well worth 30 minutes of your time. For those of us involved or interested in educational and learning technologies then IMHO there are big implications embedded within the narrative of this radio programme. Below I offer a little flavour of what the programme contains but, just in case you're not particularly interested in radio as a medium, I think it's necessary to think beyond the radio focus of the programme and consider more the internet/intranet as a 'filling station' drum I've been banging in earlier articles. The disruption/transformation potential is as relevant in many other contexts, including the potential impact on, and opportunities to enrich, how we go about finding or distributing educational content/resources at the moment.
“Radio you don't have to make an appointment for because it finds what you want and has it waiting for you on your own player at your own convenience … personal content, personal speech, music, potentially video … any sort of media at all … that's the transformative thing, people can consume on their own terms … it's a better consumer experience and it's more economically efficient.”
“The ability to communicate without wires has become so cheap to embed in user equipment that anyone can do it … and it's a capacity to communicate without wires that matters and that's what can be done in individual computers today … the barriers to entry become not regulatory or even capital based in terms of being able to buy a transmitter but purely in terms of quality and relevance to the people listening … we will have on us and with us machines capable of connecting us to any form of information flow including what we now experience as radio … ” (Yochai Benkler of Yale University)
“Going digital overturns many of the assumptions we radio people have lived with for decades , and you listeners to … rather than everybody having to listen to exactly the same thing at the same time it's much more viable for them to listen to what they want when they want it and on the device of their choosing and that changes a number of things … it changes the nature of the radio schedule … radio programming people are hilarious … they always think that people will make themselves available at a certain time to listen to a certain show and we know that back in the real world life isn't like that … what this technology allows is for people to set their own schedules … we're already seeing that in television, homes that have Sky+ or Tivo (in the United States) or PVRs (personal video recorders) … people essentially can record everything there is in digital form and then watch it at their convenience … and we see that the viewing patterns are quite different in homes that have that technology than in homes that don't … In the final analysis what the most valuable thing the consumer has is his or her time … and quality will tend to win out … in the long term the distribution channels will become less important.” (Steve McCauley)
“Radio is springing free of the regulated gatekeepers who've managed what you can hear since radio was invented … it's jumping into the hands of anyone who has something or nothing to say … merging into this thing I call Radio Me … but the internet is going to disrupt dozens of other businesses to, this is just the beginning of the revolution.” (Peter Day) .
You've got a week to listen to this Radio Me edition of In Business from the BBC archive. It's particularly ironic that, given the topic, the BBC doesn't yet offer a podcast/MP3 download for this programme; but, to be fair, it is on the BBC's podcast trial list and so should become available 'real soon now' 🙂
