The Local Yarn

I agree that the current defining feature of the Howell Creek Radio podcast is that it is “about Joel” and I think it is safe to say that your current audience, myself included, are happy hearing about Joel’s thoughts, and life. I often find that listening to your life and thoughts causes me to think about my life and thoughts so Howell Creek becomes an almost self-reflective and meditative exercise—sometimes in a serious vein, sometimes more humorous. Your most recent podcast made me chuckle aloud, envisioning your past, but also seeing parallels with the moments of absurd in my own life.

I don’t think you should consider Howell Creek value-less simply because you cannot put it in a category. Life does not fit in a category.

That said, I don’t think your audience will grow much beyond those who personally know you if you retain the current format. Life doesn’t fit in a neat category (and people don’t either) but people want things distilled down into neat categories and nice boxes for them. You could alter your podcast so as to accommodate the typical desires for consumption, or you could hold your course and imagine your podcast as a stalwart rebellion against the narrow categories society applies to life and the arts.

Therein we can see an argument for keeping your podcast as it stands. However, whether it be taking a stand against social expectations or simply satisfying the interest of your current audience—I don’t think either of those should guide what you do. Neither should trying to increase your audience, or conforming to social and artistic expectations.

What brings you joy? That is the question that needs to be answered and that, quite simply, is what should guide the path of Howell Creek Radio. If Howell Creek is satisfying your creative urge, and vision, then it is accomplishing its goal however many (or few) people agree. But it seems you are feeling personal artistic discontent with where Howell Creek is at—and to me that does indicate things may need to change, or, as you say, bottled up entirely. No particular artistic venture lasts forever.

I have been pondering the thought that some of the creative material I have to share might be best expressed in a fictionalized, semi-autobiographical format. With this present in my own thinking, I find your idea of the podcast being fictional as something worth pondering further.

What happens if you lean back, close your eyes, and imagine that you are Joel, living up north in a cabin on Howell Creek. What happened this week in your life, Joel of Howell Creek? What happened in your small community up at Howell Creek? The idea here would be rather than Howell Creek Radio being a place where you read the fiction of the real Joel, it would instead becoming a full-embodied fictional world which could function as a metaphor and canvas were you could talk about your own life intermixed with philosophical musings, and so on.

You could make the narrator/radio host something of a vague and abstracted figure and place some version of yourself and your growing family in the Howell Creek community, or alternatively you could more fully embody the host of the show. In any case, this fictional environment could give you more freedom to explore ideas, and your life, while at the same time maintaining a greater level of privacy for your family (a desire that may grow as your family does).

In an odd sort of twist, this would allow Howell Creek Radio to still be “about Joel’s life” for those who know Joel and can read between the lines, and for those who don’t personally know Joel then Howell Creek Radio could be a charming fictional podcast exploring upper Minnesota culture and the meaning of life.

I could go on with ideas, but I think you get where I’m going and I’ve made this comment long enough.

Firstly, I listen to your podcast because you’re a friend. Would I listen to it otherwise? Perhaps not. But, that’s hard to conclude definitely.

Secondly, I enjoy it because it is your perspective – creative with a flair of artsy. You can draw together disparate ideas as you paint a picture in my mind. Case in point was the Manning the Pumps with the ship imagery juxtaposed to the menial sump pump.

Thirdly, it provides respite from my daily routine of news, finances, and facts.

In summary, it is an extension of you – part of your expression within your life. To make it “about something” or “purposeful” would change it – at least the part of it to which I have been privy. Perhaps more primal questions would be, “Who is my audience?” and “Who am I trying to reach?” If the answers to those are indefinite or unconcerning, the status quo could easily be maintained.

• The idea was that since there is a tradeoff between ease of use and privacy/security one could graph the relationship and then mark a sweet spot where these two points are balanced. The suggestion was that, in the terms of this hypothetical graph, traditional email is too far to one end and Bitmessage too far to the other. The point of contention, of course, is that everyone would weight the graph differently.

• I meant complicated to use by the average public. I do not consider that a barrier of entry for myself. I have set up Linux, Apache (with attendent mailserver), and MYSQL locally, so installing and using Bitmessage myself would be quite trivial. But I realize my skill-set, and tolerance of the technical, puts me in a very small minority. Most of the populace only tolerates one-click install and simplistic use. Your Bitmessage “address” itself is sufficent to turn away most. That address tells the average person Bitmessage is too complicated without them having to even attempt to install the program.

• You ask, “I’m looking for a distinction between inherent un-useability and un-useability as currently implemented.” My opinion is that as currently implimented will not be used by the general public. I feel it is too early in the life of Bitmessage to offer an opinion of what it might be—but I think I can safely say that if Bitmessage were to have any hope of going mainstream it would need a UI interface to make it function on the frontend like email.

I hope that clarifies.

The average non-technical end-user of email does not feel like it is broken in any sufficently meaningful way. People complain, but people are lazy, and the status quo suits them well enough becuase the problems in email do not seem to significantly impact the life of the average user. One can argue whether this impression is accurate, but the fact that most people feel this way is a huge hurdle for Bitmessage, or any other communication method that would supplant email.

The curious thing to me is the fact that ISP and internet email companies are not trying to create and deploy an improvment on email. Current protocol is horribly out-dated and the ease with which the system is spammed creates massive (and costly) headaches for the companies which handle email. I am surprised they haven’t found sufficent monetary incentive to create a better solution.

That said, I suspect if a solution were invented by ISPs and internet email companies I doubt it would be weighted toward the privacy of users.

I agree with your two points, but any system involves tradeoffs. Communication is inherently insecure—to one degree or another. Any communication (electronic or paper) which passes through a third party is more insecure than communication which is done face-to-face. But even face-to-face communication has the risk of being overheard or the second party betraying the communicator either by circumstance or malice.

I am glad to see the creation of Bitmessage because I think more options for communication is always a good thing. Unfortunately, after I looked over Bitmessage it was clear to me that, as it stands, it won’t replace email. For the technologically illiterate it is still too complicated. The masses have clearly demonstrated they prefer ease of use over privacy or security. For myself, I admit I am uneasy over the “always on” feature of acting as a server for messages. Sure, its not supposed to be possible to use the bitmessage software for malicious attacks on the computers running it, but at this stage I feel that in trying to close one can of worms (the insecurity of email) another can of worms may be opened.

I will watch the continued development of Bitmessage with interest. If the technology matured, I would be interested in seeing it built into email clients like Thunderbird so a person could continue to receive unsecure emails and bitmessages in the same location locally.