Technological progress

[womzilla]

When I matriculated at Duke in 1982, the campus radio station (WXDU) didn't even have a transmission tower; it was "broadcast" AM over the West Campus electrical lines, which meant that you cold just barely get a signal on a radio from inside some of the campus buildings. The second year I was there, they finally got real FM signal, which I could usually but not always pick up on my car radio or my bedroom when in 1987 I moved back to my parents' house in Chapel Hill, a whopping eight miles away.

I thought of this yesterday when I drove to my weekly gaming group in Long Island. I was listening to the Memorial Day edition of Divaville Lounge, which I had recorded off the intertubes using the Relay AV software and then transferred to my Sansa Fuze, and then fed that into my car stereo through a tape cassette adapter. What a world!

(I note that my local radio station of choice, The Peak, is running ads which basically say "We know our radio signal isn't very strong, and if you live south of Eastchester, you get interference from a radio station in New Jersey--so listen to us on the internet instead!". Which really doesn't help when I'm driving, since I don't so much have an internet connection in my car.

And that in turn reminds me of a meeting when Crossover Technologies was making the transition to Unplugged. We were brainstorming applications for cell phones, back in the day when web and e-mail on portable devices were still barely extant, and I blurted out, "Radio! Wireless radio!" I was serious and didn't even realize the oroborosian silliness of what I was proposing; but internet radio is a very different thing, and better in many ways, than mere terrestrial radio, and it should be available on wireless devices.)

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

When KFAI was just starting, it had a 10 Watt transmitter, technically effective 13 Watts since it was on the roof of the building, but later engineers said it wasn't operating at full power near the end. I used to give the station ID, "Fresh Air Radio, exclusive to parts of South Minneapolis."

[sarah-ovenall.livejournal.com]

thanks for listening! Did you hear the part with Truman's VJ Day speech? I was struck by how stiff he sounded. It's hard to imagine someone getting to national office today who was that bad of a public speaker. It's kind of charming in a way.

I think supposedly I can listen to internet radio in my car using my iPod, though I haven't tried it. I do listen to Pandora in my car on the iPhone, which is nice.