There’s no local

I was listening to local radio this morning. Local radio in this case being Leith FM and the lunchtime show provided by Ewan Spence. Through the power of the internet streaming the show and through the connections Ewan has around the world, he had listeners from San Francisco, New York, New Zealand and London. What do the ‘locals’ make of that, when requests for songs are global? ( I had my first radio request played. Woot!)

I’m also earwigging on the NMK forum, through Twitter and Jaiku and blog posts, finding enough content to have a pretty good idea of what is going on and the announcements that are made. For example, Jason Calacanis’s announcement of his ‘publically’ driven Mahalo Greenhouse came via Twitter and Suw Kevin. Not through any press release or traditional media method. (Corrected as I’m getting my Strange Attractors messed up. Not enough coffee when I was reading things)

Although one thing I remind people constantly is that the rise of a global connectivity is still only for the minority – a growing minority sure, but confirmed to people in certain countries of certain ages or inclination. Very few of the people I know ‘before web’ are connected in the same way; in fact very few of the people I’ve met where the meeting was not facilitated through the web, are connected in that way. So whilst a lot of us are all busy globalising the local, still remember the people who are local only.

3 thoughts on “There’s no local

  1. Well perhaps only a true local would know for sure that that was Kevin on Strange Attractor, not Suw – I’m sitting next to him right now 🙂

  2. You’ll have to apologise to him then from me…I was convinced it was Suw’s tweet that led me to it. But looking at it, it was Kevin. Reminder to self – do not make conclusions and blog posts before TWO cups of coffee in the morning.

  3. Don’t worry Rachel. Dan Gillmor thought that Suw was here because he saw the posts on Strange Attractor.

    I’m with you though. I can’t be held responsible for my actions before my morning coffee.