The beauty of podcasting is that it gives everyone a voice, even those who might not typically have a channel through which to deliver a message. Race, socio-ecnomic class, and geographic don't matter. Solely based on the merit of content (or the individual), other people can subscribe and listen in on a regular basis. This is obviously one of the great facets of blogging, too.

Unfortunately, the podsphere is overpopulated with the incessant ramblings of boring people who lack anything interesting to say. Yes, they certainly deserve a voice. However, with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops overseas and similar numbers of people (more?) affected by the recent earthquake and tsunamis, all of which would probably love to have their story heard (and quite frankly, would likely have a deeper message to send), why is this so? I realize podcasting isn't the first thing somebody thinks of in a tragic situation, but for the troops especially--where they must deal with lengthy stays overseas and have family members who likely have the necessary technology to receive such data--it seems this would be an amazing use of the technology. I suspect it's primarily due to lack of equipment and infrastructure.

We need to change that.

This is one reason why I intend to continue investing my life in making technology better and improving its reach: So that we don't have lame excuses such as this standing in the way of the creation and dissemination of information, regardless of who wants to publish or subscribe.