mirrors the adoption of the internet: in 1923, 1% of US households owned a radio; by 1937, 75% did • This era before television was the Golden Age of Radio, when radio was the dominant means of mass communication • Essentially all mass communication – news, music, drama, comedy, sports, religion, politics, commerce – happened on radio
ubiquity!) of television, radio was forced to change: most scheduled programming went to TV • Large blocks of unscheduled content (music, sports, talk) became the norm, with each of these going through their own adaptations • Speaking very personally, radio generated the voices of my youth: Bob Martin & Larry Zimmer; Bruce Williams; Tom and Ray Magliozzi • Unlike other technological shifts, television changed radio, but it did not obviate it; why did radio continue to endure?
an extraordinary power: unlike watching video, listening to audio allows you to easily divide your attention! • Listening to audio that does not demand your attention (i.e., background music) can help focus on cognitively intense tasks • Listening to audio that does demand your attention can help maintain alertness and energy on a repetitive task (housework, walking, driving) – and can allow you to better focus your attention on audio!
car; as more time was spent in the car, radio experienced a renaissance • e.g. NPR (started only in 1970!) became the way many got their news • Within this resurgence, a renaissance of audio storytelling in the mid 1990s led by Ira Glass and This American Life • This American Life represented a return to the Golden Era of audio in that it used audio very deliberately to tell people’s stories
is our oldest form of storytelling: we tell stories of our own and we listen to stories of others • Stories are not simply a recounting: they are captivating because they arouse our empathy (and curiosity!) – we care what happens next • Pre-literate societies used speaking and listening to convey wisdom; we are hard-wired to learn from the experiences of others • Stories are especially important for technologists!
recordings were available, but were prohibitively expensive for what amounted to a single use… • The explosion of the internet in the late 1990s gave rise to Internet radio, but it was hamstrung by proprietary formats and desktop form factors • While it was not the first portable MP3 player, Apple’s iPod had an outsized influence: podcasting was born • Importantly, podcasts were syndicated via RSS feeds
decade, but several trends served to accelerate it into a broader mainstream… • Growing ubiquity of smartphones (starting ca. 2007) no longer demanded a dedicated MP3 player • Bluetooth enabled for wireless headphones, which more allowed for a wider range of tasks to be done while listening • Breakthrough ultra longform podcasts like Serial (2014) from This American Life alumna Sarah Koenig brought broader attention
in 2019, we knew that we would also start the podcast that we had always wanted: stories from engineers • On the Metal was born – and thanks to the technologists who joined us, the stories were more compelling than we could have imagined! • Many engineers who now work at Oxide were introduced to the company by listening to On the Metal • We were well into recording our second season when our plans for the podcast were interrupted...
2020, On the Metal – which we had been recording in person – went on indefinite hiatus • We assumed that we would get back to recording them, but lockdown extended longer than we had anticipated (and we had also become very busy building the product!) • But as with so much, the pandemic gave as well as took, in the form of a new twist on an old medium: social audio
real-time audio (that is, conversation!) within social networks on the internet • Social audio provided an outlet that a socially isolated populace craved, as demonstrated by the explosion of popularity in Clubhouse • Despite initial enthusiasm, Clubhouse also badly fumbled: iPhone-only; focused on monetization rather than value; focused on conversations with celebrities rather than peers; overrun with crypto enthusiasts • In 2021, Twitter released their social audio feature, Twitter Spaces…
Spaces seemed like a great experiment! • I convinced longtime friend and colleague Adam Leventhal to join me so I wouldn’t die alone; we held our first Twitter Space on May 3, 2021 • Twitter Spaces were immediately compelling: the dynamic of known voices plus new ones led to great conversations • Twitter Spaces had no recording feature, but Adam constructed a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption to record them • We published the recordings (YouTube + RSS) as Oxide and Friends
but also maddening: many bugs and shortcomings – and not necessarily headed in the right direction • With Twitter’s new ownership, it became clear that we needed a new platform; after some experimentation, we settled on Discord • Discord is compelling in part because of its roots as true social audio (audio communication among friends) rather than celebrity worship • Discord’s stage functionality allows for new voices, easily managed • Having a concurrent text chat has been a tremendous improvement!
exactly that: hanging out with friends (old ones and new!) talking about topics that are topical or interesting to us • There have been interesting discussions – but also lots of storytelling, rants on topics of the day, predictions (and debates!) on future technologies, disagreements on corrections to pronunciation, etc. • In short, what engineers talk about! • The conversations have been well-received – but one particular group has seemed to find them especially compelling: younger engineers
Oxide and Friends because it is social audio as a vector for engineering wisdom • That is, a group of seasoned engineers expanding their circle to younger ones, showing their scars and sharing their perspectives • This shouldn’t have been surprising, but we had (accidentally!) recreated online what I had always most cherished as a younger engineer…
for a standing hallway track, but potentially vastly improved: open, recorded, accessible – and remote-friendly! • It allows for a team to speak in its own voice about its creations • For Oxide, this includes bringup, compliance, supply chain, debugging, system software, distributed systems – and whole lot of Rust • For some of these topics, no team has ever gone on the record with their experiences – it shines a light on broadly hidden domains • It is essential for younger engineers to see these domains!
Social audio presents a new vector for an age-old means for conveying our hard-won engineering wisdom – and every team can do this • There are things that happen on every engineering team that someone somewhere else will find interesting; you needn’t cater to everyone! • To be effective, social audio should be: open, recorded, and syndicated • Check out the Oxide and Friends back catalog – and join us live! • If you start your own, please let us know so we can like-and-subscribe!
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