In recent years radio and the Internet have been permanently intertwined. Recently, radio has begun to be broadcast over the Internet, and Internet content has begun to be broadcast over the airwaves. For this exchange of positions to occur, there needs to be a change in transmission of sound from the standard analogue of radio, to the digital nature of the Internet.Analogue audio will become extinct in the near future. Although sound in nature and our own hearing is analogue, the capturing, storage and transmission of analogue sound is difficult without losing quality. For example, if one keeps making copies of an audio tape, the quality gets worse every time; in the same way, each t ...view middle of the document...
The Internet and its content are largely available through a large, ungainly box, usually in the corner of the living room.As technology becomes more advanced, this will change, and soon people will not think much of having full access the Internet from a tiny box that they can carry anywhere, just as a person with a Walkman is nothing remarkable. One of the great things about wireless communication is the freedom to be anywhere. The natural extension of the Internet is to allow the elimination of the wires and place the Internet into the car, in public, and the "Netman" on the beach.As the Internet begins to permeate the classic places for radio to be used, radio will have to adapt to remain in use. The most likely way for this adaptation to occur is for most of radio broadcasts to be transmitted over the Internet. Mode of the delivery is, irrelevant compared to quality of programming and content, including advertising. Whether wired or wireless we should see radio in the broader view, as an ideal medium for communication but without the "old radio" constraints.When television first arrived it was described as "radio with pictures," and maybe we might now think of radio as not, "television without pictures," but as a medium that can add pictures and other content as desired. Television does not have its impact without sound, but radio is great without pictures. Imagine a radio combined with pictures and video all delivered via the Internet to the palm of your hand.Radio, delivered over the Internet can be thought of as the base medium. Then functionality can be added to it at any time. This can be any combination of the sound we now call radio, the pictures we normally see as television plus the raw data ...
