Charles on… anything that comes along

Over at happy-go-lucky Robert Scoble’s blog, he’s aligned himself with, errr, happy-go-lucky Dave Winer in his dislike of stop energy (basically, people sucking their teeth and saying “Werl, you can’t, see..” Builders have it in spades (haha) but of course all sorts of bits of any organisation that is meant to be creative has it too, because you can’t put just any old idea out there.

The person who has clearly tweaked Scoble [sidenote: I feel uncofortable using just his surname; I dislike it when people do it to me] is journalist John Dvorak, who had a rant recently against the growing phenomenon of Podcasting. (Podcasting is certainly growing, inasmuch as it’s not shrinking. Argue amongst yourselves about how much of it really goes on.)

OK, John Dvorak seems here principally to be saying “I can’t make it work, ergo it’s for utter geeks and Mac-users or the intersection of the two”. Which has Scoble grinding his teeth: Now, a good critical comment is important to the industry. It helps weed out weak ideas, or at least helps reshape those ideas so that they are applicable to more people.

But, I’m tired of people who do nothing but criticise.

Now, quite often the people who are in line to do that criticism, at least in public places, have historically been journalists, or more specifically columnists. (Though now anyone online can have a blog, hey, everyone’s a critic.) I do some of this myself; a few weeks back I wasn’t very complimentary (paywalled article) about the new Blackberry 7710, because it seemed to be neither handheld nor mobile phone, and had a different keyboard from any other handheld device in general use. But then again when I rave about something - as I did the previous Blackberry 7230 - then I make that clear too.

So is it really journalists who generate the stop energy? I don’t think so. How magical if ’twere so: there are lots of bad things we’d like to stop just by writing a few words on a page. Scoble’s annoyance seems to me more like someone having a raw nerve touched. Podcasting doesn’t seem quite like a grassroots movement; it’s more something that’s spreading outwards from developers. It has plenty of potential for a world where people are sick of the radio stations they’d otherwise find themselves listening to. (Though in the UK, radio listening figures have risen dramatically recently.) Honestly, Robert (can I call you Robert?), one article by one guy isn’t going to make a difference. It never does.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• What's the point in embargoes? It's not to keep things sikrit (25 July 2005; score: 46.48%)
• Environmentalists will embrace nuclear power and GMOs, and other contrary thinking (18 April 2005; score: 44.18%)
• Guardian Tech Weekly podcast: the second one (30 December 2007; score: 40.59%)