Why Podcasts Are A Cultural Artefact

Podcasts, like other technology tools, were once massively hyped, but not to the ridiculous degree of Artificial Intelligence, then declared dead, then on life support, then hyped again and now some declaring them on their death spiral. The reality however, is that podcasts have become a cultural artefact. Meaning they’re far from dead and are becoming a key part of the fabric of the aesthetic elements of culture.

What does it mean when an information technology becomes part of the cultural fabric? When a technology is adopted into sociocultural systems it takes on a degree of cultural relevance, which can then have meaningful impact on society, good or bad.

First I’ll look at the important peripheral influences that have lead to podcasts becoming a cultural artefact and then I’ll look at fundamental reason of why they’re successful and here to stay.

Much of the downplaying of podcasts in recent years has been purely from an economic, capitalism oriented viewpoint. Likely driven by a mix of competitive fears in the battle for ever fracturing ad dollars and secondly by the increasingly intense competition for ears and eyes. Yet economic factors rarely win out against the invisible hand of society.

Economic models have long played a role in human societies. In anthropology, we call them reciprocity systems. We have increasing evidence that even our ancient ancestors, going back to foragers, used items like tools and jewelry for trade. Humans playing with economic systems is an element of culture and like culture itself, they are mutable.

Our current dominant model is capitalism. It too, is likely to change, perhaps, as some argue, already is. Current predictions and forecasts of technologies are largely framed in terms of capitalism. That is a narrow lens within which to define the success or failure of any technology. And is not the deciding factor by any means.

I’m not including a bunch of statistics and data reports on the economic performances of podcasts because that’s quantitative and only represents a very small sliver of why podcasts have become a cultural artefact. They play a role, but are not the arbiter of a technology’s success. Too often today, we view technologies from a purely economic lens. To view technologies in this way only is to completely misunderstand how technologies actually get adopted into societies and cultures. It’s about as daft as using GDP has become.

The more influential cultural factors for the success of any technology in broader sociocultural systems are norms, behaviours, customs and traditions. They outweigh economic models by a wide margin, even though they’re more qualitative. That makes predictions in financial terms much harder and our world today is under the magical delusion that everything can be measured, including humans and all our lovely quirks.

One of the key indicators of whether or not a technology will be adopted by and applied within a cultural system is how it becomes a part of the aesthetic element of culture. The aesthetic elements of culture include art, literature, music, architecture, photography, film.

Podcasts are becoming ever more deeply embedded as an artefact, a technology, into the aesthetic aspect of culture. It takes time for this to happen though and is often a wobbly road. Books went down a similar path.

At first, books that weren’t bibles or religious in nature were scorned by the elites and the Catholic Church. Then academics found they were a great way to argue with one another over theories and to share ideas. Along came penny novels and fiction. There are still debates over books, such as the banning of certain books that go against ideologies in America.It took a while for printed books to become embedded in culture. Perhaps because there were no podcasts then to talk about good books.

Podcasts, like reading books, also offer different ways to interact with them as a medium. Ever heard of speed reading? Of course. Or skimming of books? How many books do you have that are dog-eared or have parts lit up by a highlighter or bits of sticky things to mark key points of reference? How many memes are there with quotes pulled from books?

Podcasts offer similar methods of interaction. You can speed them up for those who prefer faster listening. You can skip ahead (like flitting to the next chapter), you can cut out a sliver of audio for a quote. You can “bookmark” certain parts to pull for an audio snippet. You can create your own library of podcasts (note the use of book terminology with podcasts.) The way we interact with a podcast is similar to books. This cross-functionality with a medium helps give it cultural influence.

The Real Reason Podcasts Are A Cultural Artefact

There is one primary and significant reason however, that podcasts are becoming a cultural artefact and why they’re here to stay. If you really want to understand when a technology becomes part of society, don’t use quantitative measures, use qualitative understanding.

The real reason for podcasts becoming a cultural artefact? Story telling. Specifically, audio story telling. Humans have been telling stories in audio for far longer than any other format. Books are only a few hundred years old. Story telling in audio, using language, has been around for about 70,000 years, though it could be longer. It’s highly likely that we started telling stories while the mastodon pot roast was cooking by the fire.

Story telling is a fundamental survival mechanism within human cultures. We told stories not just for entertainment, but to share our realities with one another. Sharing our realities enables us to understand one another and, most importantly for human survival, to form social systems, to be able to work together. Culture itself is humanity’s primary survival mechanism because biological evolution alone moves too slow for us.

Through story telling, our ancestors could figure out hunting strategies to get that juicy Mastodon roast for dinner. What foods were safe, what ones could help heal. Story telling helped us form morals, ethics, values and philosophise around the fire. We added visual elements to stories when we started finger painting on cave walls.

We’re not the only animal to tell stories either. And don’t forget, as much as we try to distance ourselves from other animals, we are, in fact, animals. Bees return to a hive and use wiggles to tell a story about where all the yummy flowers are. Crows gather at sunset in part to tell stories that help them survive, but perhaps too about adventures. Whales and dolphins, we are starting to suspect, gather to tell stories too, though this is still speculative.

When humans discover a mechanism for telling stories that becomes adopted by a broader swathe of society, becomes part of our norms and traditions, that technology or mechanism, eventually becomes a cultural artefact.

We are still extremely early in terms of living in a techno-social world. So new mechanisms, such as podcasts will, as books did, get some pushback. One of the ways we determine the adoption of a technology or means of cultural transmission, is to argue against it for a period of time. Sometimes this is because of competing economic interests and sometimes because it brings change to our current norms, customs and traditions.

We have a lot of traditions around books. Like curling up in a safe, comfortable space to just read. The rituals around text books in our educational years. Libraries, both communal and personal. Behavioural norms on things like not putting sticky notes in all our books and not bending the binding to leave marks. Podcasts, like books, are also an experiential technology, many people have a preferred time and place to listen to podcasts as they do for reading books.

We are developing norms and behaviours around podcasts, but the technology is still in its early phases so it’s hard to predict how new norms will evolve. We are still struggling, as a species, with living in two worlds now; the physical and the digital.

It is becoming increasingly important for authors to tell their stories in podcasts as well. Not just audiobooks. For societal luminaries and thought-leaders to be on podcasts, for news media to feature podcasts as well. Not just from an economic perspective but because humans love audio story telling. Story telling is a fundamental survival tactic for humans.

The economic model behind podcasting is still early too. Any digital channel is bombarded with advertising. It is an easy, yet lazy business model. Some podcasts have paid subscribers, others will have sponsors. As digital advertising becomes ever more ubiquitous, it’s value will decline not just for podcasts, but for all digital channels. Using a metric of advertising value for a podcast is silly and not justifiable over the longer term. New business models will evolve.

Podcasting is here to stay because it is a culturally accepted and valued form of storytelling. The formats, norms and customs are evolving, just as they have with books.

The biggest risk to podcasts isn’t economics, it’s the catastrophic failure of energy systems. If we can’t recharge our devices, if the data centres that host podcasts collapse, then so they go into the aether. It’s a bit ironic that in our digital age, printed books, cave paintings, carved rocks, still remain the longest lasting storage mechanism for human stories. But as long as all that is electrified remains electrified, podcasts are here to stay. Aesthetic cultural artefacts can’t be understood by quantifying them, but they can be understood qualitatively.