Day 293: Slow Day

3 Responses to Day 293: Slow Day

1. Tara Li says:

   January 22, 2012 at 12:18 am

   The thing about audio versus text versus video – in a way, it’s a discussion about bandwidth.

   It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This is both true in a metaphorical sense, but in many ways, it’s true literally as well. The average word is 5 characters, plus a space, so a thousand words is roughly 6K of storage, and you can get a fairly nice picture stored in that 6K of computer storage. But more, a musical score is a more compact representation of music than the words describing each note along the score. There’s a – though I can’t really quantify it – a bandwidth associated with each. Likewise, you can describe in great detail the inflections, the timing of a conversation in text. And in theory, you could describe it exactly enough that someone hearing it would find nothing extra in listening to it. But by hearing it, you get that representation in a shorter time frame, where your mind can comprehend it as a gestalt better. And therefore, emotional cues come through better, and you don’t need emoticons. When you add audio and video together, even more bandwidth is consumed – more of the viewer’s mental bandwidth – but at the same time, it’s delivered as a package that makes the viewer more able to handle it.

   By using a podcast – especially an audio one – you’re also in some ways using the excess mental bandwidth of the listener, where they may be paying close attention to what they see, but some small traces of what they hear filter in, and if they find a need to re-listen to the podcast, they will find themselves with bits and pieces already in place, for the rest to be fitted to – kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, with a corner piece already in place attached to several other pieces – it just makes the puzzle as a whole that much easier.

   Come to think of it – I wonder if anyone’s ever tried feeding information in a secondary background track, and then presenting it later as the primary attention track to achieve better over-all comprehension and retention.

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2. Chong Go says:

   January 22, 2012 at 7:54 am

   Hi Nathan,
   I’ll bet Steven King meant that an agent isn’t necessary until enough people care about your work to bother stealing it!
   Entering “Nathan Lowell .torrent” into google, I found your book several places, including the audio books! “Umm, those are free anyway…” (though a nice donation if one appreciated it is always a good idea!) I think the heart of the matter is what you mentioned, price and availabilty. If it’s available, and reasonably priced, you really cut the legs out from under the pirates.

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3. Ignatz says:

   January 22, 2012 at 9:03 am

   It is also worth pointing out that for a writer, such as yourself, Nate, who can put thought to page at such speed and with so much (relative) facility that the time spent trying to play “Whack-a-Mole” with the pirates is really more profitably spent creating new material. 😉

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