Broadcasting is an interesting word. The ‘casting’ part is taken from fishing, where one casts a net the purpose of which is to catch many fish at the same time, instead of catching the fish one by one. The ‘broad’ part is to emphasize that the ‘cast’ is really broad (so not just around your boat or from the beach)
Similar to fishing, broadcasting also means that you are catching all sorts of fish, for example protected species or dolphins with your tuna.
Until a few years ago, this was the case with video broadcasting in general, although tv guide schedules are 9and were) published to ensure that you are able to watch what you wanted to watch and when it is (or was) broadcasted. Of course that changed with movies on demand, tivo, pvr’s and all the other great technology that developed around media on demand.
On the Internet, broadcasting has also changed forever on the 7th of May 2012. It happened quietly, without much fanfare and it was not branded as Youtube 2.0, or anything spectacular. But is is quite spectacular.
Technological innovation by Google has allowed Google to offer Google+ Hangouts On Air. This allows anyone to broadcast anything to a global audience.
Yes, anyone, anytime, live video, media streaming, anything, broadcasted directly to you.
So, the word broadcast and broadcasting should now be cast into things ancient and things historic? No, bored people will still troll the Internet ocean for something new, something fresh, something exciting that they can ‘discover’ and Google plus (twitter on steroids) to their minions of followers whilst they are having Sunday lunch with their family.
Discussion, human interaction, face to face, all other things yesterday that we may still do for now…