Carlos A. Scolari: "Podcasts are exploring the limits of oral communication"

Carlos A. Scolari is one of the most reputed thinkers on media in Spain and Latin America.

This Argentine communication theorist has lived in Europe since 1990. He currently resides in Spain and has been a professor at Pompeu Fabra University since 2010. One of his many theoretical contributions was the creation of the term "hypermediations", according to which digital technologies do not they only transform the world, but also have a powerful impact on the understanding of that world they manufacture.

Some of his books are key to understanding where the media industry is heading:

Hypermediaciones

(2008)

, Media Ecology

(2015)

,

Media Evolution

(2020), Culture Snack

(2021) are some of them.

We talked with him about his new book and about the booming audio industry in the media ecosystem.

Question:

Reissue your book

The Laws of the Interface

in Gedisa with an epilogue dedicated to the post-pandemic world.

I wanted to ask you what those laws are, how they affect content creators, and what media world are we heading towards.

Answer:

The first edition of

The Laws of the Interface

is from 2018. In these years, both my research team and other colleagues have applied this analysis model, which is quite flexible and simple, to different realities.

First of all,

we start from an expansion of the classic concept of “interface”: we no longer only analyze the relationship of the subject in front of the screen, with the mouse or the

joystick

in hand, but we also begin to analyze a classroom, a cinema, a museum or a job sector as if it were an interface.

In other words, we scale the analysis model and apply it to educational, work, urban or cultural interfaces.

Now, if the pandemic brought out something, it is the obsolescence and problems of many interfaces.

For example, health interfaces had to be redesigned overnight to accommodate thousands of covid patients;

The same happened with the educational interfaces: in a few weeks they had to go from face-to-face to

online

mode

.

This analysis model, which can also be applied to content production and communication, that is, to media interfaces, helps us to analyze the functioning of interfaces in a broad sense, detect their problems and, most importantly, redesign them. .

Q:

I was wondering what role the emergence of audio plays in these interfaces.

How do you analyze it?

A: It

could be said that new players are appearing in the media interface, from new content generators (

youtubers, tiktokers, podcasters,

etc.) to new technological players (for example algorithms or the reviled platforms) and content (short and ephemeral videos,

podcasts

, audiobooks, etc.).

At this time, mediated oral communication is in a state of effervescence: some new experience emerges every day, such as the Clubhouse platform, the result of hybridizations and experimentations in that sector of the media ecosystem.

Q:

There is an aphorism by Marshall McLuhan that you quote in the book: "The content of a new medium is always an old medium."

Do you think something like this happens, for example, with the

podcast

?

A:

The

podcast

is a hybrid product that brings together elements from the radio, from literature (or better, from the audiobook) and even from the short audiovisual formats available on demand.

This is always the case: new media takes back elements of old media;

for example, WhatsApp recovered the brief and summarized writing of the SMS, which obviously came from the telegraphic messages of the 19th century.

Returning to

podcasts

, these were born in the early 2000s with RSS technology, a format that allowed you to subscribe to certain content on the web.

This was a first step in the transition from

push

mode

, where the broadcaster transmitted content, as happened in

broadcasting

, to

pull

mode

, where the user chooses what to consume and when to do it.

But it is not easy to define them:

podcasts

are more than just "radio

on demand

" ...

Q: It

says in the book that interfaces are not eternal, but some like the interface of the book object seem to be, right?

Why do interfaces stop working: disappear or just transform?

A:

It is very difficult for an interface to disappear completely: always some component —such as the telegraphic language example and WhatsApp messages— can reappear in another interface.

The printed book took up countless elements from handwritten books and other writing supports.

For example, the lists: they were present on clay tablets, on papyri, in books and on ... Twitter.

In recent decades there has been much discussion about the "death of the book."

While certain types of textual content — for example, encyclopedias or scientific articles — are hardly printed any more, others are in dire health.

We could say that there is a coexistence of different formats, media and reading experiences.

This does not mean that in the future another reading interface may emerge that surpasses that of the book, but surely that interface will have a lot of the book.

Q: You

also say that evolution moves at slow rates and I don't know how well this fits in the accelerationist era that we live in.

A:

The one that works slowly is biological evolution, not technological evolution!

However, the sensation of living in accelerated time was already had at the beginning of the 19th century, when the steam engine burst in and the train changed the conception of time and space.

In other words, acceleration is a fundamental component of Modernity.

Romanticism was a consequence of this acceleration: we had to go back to the slow times of the past ... This does not mean that, since the arrival of the web only 10,000 days ago, the life of

homo sapiens

has suffered a further speed boost.

On the other hand, having so much content on offer, our attention is fragmented into a multiplicity of experiences —many ephemeral— of media consumption that further increases that feeling of acceleration.

Q:

In your blog Hipermediaciones you recently dedicated an entry to talking about the golden age of oral communication.

Why do you think it is happening right now?

A:

The evolution of media is a complex and unpredictable process.

In the early 1990s, no one would have thought that SMS would become the

killer application

for mobile phones and a great source of income.

Who would have thought that in the age of YouTube, TikTok and

stories,

the audio format had something to say?

However, we are witnessing a revival of oral formats.

Let us remember that in the 1920s, with the spread of radio, the first golden age of mediated orality was experienced.

The current boom in audio formats is different: it occurs in a much more populated and competitive ecosystem.

In the twenties, the radio only competed with the newspapers and the cinema, instead, now there is a pitched battle for our free time and our attention.

Q:

In the

post it

says: "The

podcast

is a very tuned radio, with high levels of pre-production and without the urgent times or the chaotic screaming of

broadcasting

."

I don't know if I could develop this idea a little more.

A:

What characterizes traditional radio is live transmission, that voice that directly addresses listeners.

That feeling that "someone is talking to you" here and now is unique and not even the power of the television image could with it.

While some

podcasts are

trying to recover that component of traditional radio, other experiences - such as

Solaris

,

Jorge Carrión's “sound rehearsal”

podcast -

are exploring new dimensions and formats less linked to live and direct communication.

For example, the overlapping of voices that characterizes radio talk shows is very difficult to find in

podcasts

.

In this sense,

podcasts

are exploring the limits of oral communication, going beyond radio

broadcasting

and generating new experiences within on-demand content platforms.

Q:

You also affirm that, although media species coexist, this does not mean that in media ecology there is not a brutal competition to dominate the territory, that there is a struggle for survival.

In this sense, what media will survive?

A:

As in any ecosystem, there is always competition and cooperation at the same time.

When television emerged, competition with theaters was brutal;

however, after a few years they began to function in an articulate way.

At this time we are witnessing the so-called “platform war”, a conflict that is taking place not only between audiovisual platforms (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney +, HBO, etc.), but also between all the actors in the media ecosystem.

They fight for our attention but also for our data.

If we see what happened in the past, it is most likely that not all the actors will survive or manage to build a niche to survive ... In any case, given that media ecology is a very complex system subjected to infinite variables, we will never be able to predict what will pass or what medium will be extinguished.

10 years ago nobody gave a penny for vinyl records, and yet they have managed to build a niche and survive.

Q:

What do you think about the debate of whether listening to audiobooks is reading?

I think he claims that in audiobooks, the voice is a "slave" to the written record.

A:

Fifty years ago Walter Ong, a colleague of Marshall McLuhan, developed the concept of “secondary orality” to refer to the orality that develops after the spread of literacy.

The orality of 6,000 years ago, when writing was being born, is not the same as the later orality.

Writing modified our way of thinking and articulating oral discourses.

Now, it is not the same to read a book in silence than to listen to someone reading it.

Silent reading is a relatively recent phenomenon (it has existed more or less since the 13th century): reading aloud, especially in groups, was practically the only known form of reading for centuries.

Reading a book in silence is not the same as listening to a voice reading it: in both cases, different processes are activated and different skills are put into practice.

It is not the same to read

Don Quixote

than to listen to an audiobook, just as it is not the same to see it on film than to fight against the windmills in a video game.

They are all different experiences and experiences of the same narrative world.

Q:

We are witnessing the flourishing of social audio with

apps

like Clubhouse, Stereo or Twitter Spaces.

Do you think that audio can be the future of social networks?

A:

As I said before, it is impossible to predict the shape the media ecosystem will take in the future.

But I dare say that I see it difficult for the future of networks to be exclusively of audio formats, but audio will surely be part of the future of social networks.

Q:

Finally, recommend a

podcast to me

.

A:

Obviously, I would recommend

Solaris,

but I mentioned it before.

I also really like

Verne and Wells Science fiction

, by Alberto García, where he revisits authors of science fiction and other popular genres that I appreciate very much.