If you follow Paul Boag (of the excellent boagworld podcast) on Twitter, you’re well aware that he frequently posts thoughts & insights in short audio clips through AudioBoo.  In one such recent post, he’s sparked a very interesting conversation: on the web, how important is it that everything is 100% accessible?  With his AudioBoo posts, specifically, he wonders how long it will be until someone complains about the format not being as widely accessible as possible.

While the use of speech-to-text technologies is certainly one direction this conversation can go, I’m fascinated by the implementation of crowdsourcing to handle this problem.  To the point: let listeners & fans transcribe the audio content, as they desire, fueled simply by the joy of spreading the ideas and making the content more widely available.  A positive side-effect of this approach is the inevitable additions to the greater conversation; the ideas, thoughts, and insights added to the topic by those doing the trascriptions.

Accordingly, I offer my transcription of Mr. Boag’s latest AudioBoo: Continue reading »

Remember when you were a kid and used to think about the future? If you were like me, visions of the future were full of hoverboards, flying cars, and shiny chrome everything. There was no doubt the future would be awesome, even if it seemed forever away.

Things seem quite different as an adult, especially one living in the early 21st century. The future no longer waits quietly over the horizon, but is instead standing at the doorstep. At times, peering ahead one or two decades seems somewhat unfathomable, as our lives change so much with each passing year. How to put it all into perspective?

The solution is simple: turn to a media futurist! Continue reading »