Buzz Out Loud Lounge forum: Is tech industry perceived to be more important then it is?

My friends are all fairly tech-savvy and none of them listen to podcasts. Or move their shows sitting on tivo onto their ipod to watch. Or twitter. None have ever heard of Hulu or Mahalo. I watch tv online and no longer touch a real newspaper and feel lost w/o my email and IM. But not so for my friends. I think we who listen to podcasts like BOL are under the mistaken impression that most other people care about this tech stuff the way that we do. But they dont. Consumers havent even heard of net neutrality and the only way they will ever know about it or care is if they see a sudden change in their monthly ISP bill.

I agree that people tend to adapt to new thing (like buying ipods, or using email), but it seems to me that media is a different beast in general. If people are happy with the way they are getting it, I don't see someone changing to the "new thing" (wow I use a lot of air quotes in my messages!). The iPod/mp3 players are clear advances over cd players and Walkmans because they allow you to carry more music at once. I don't think, if CD players had the same capacity as MP3 players, you would have seen the seismic shift that you did. The only thing I can see the people massively switching toward is if they can get a la cart cable channels on THEIR TV easily, whether it is through a cable box or some streaming device that is EASILY setup on their PC. They won't do it if they have to hack something or do some other funny computer install. I feel that this would be done because it is simplifying the person's life by getting only the channels they want (especially if it saves them money) and because the media would still be accessible from their TV, which is how I think 99% of the US still WANTS to watch their video media (we did just get to HD programming). There is too much complexity in getting podcasts and buying TV shows on iTunes. People (mainstream US) want access to just be THERE and not have to go in, pick the TV show you want to download...wait for it to download...and then watch it. I guess OnDemand movies are kinda like this, are they that popular over DVD/PPV/premium channels? I seem to be rambling again, but thanks for the replies thus far.

I'm a 19 y.o. IT student at University, and *none* of my friends at University listen to podcasts at all, I'm the only one, and only one of them uses Twitter, and I introduced them to it. I have only two friends who are even on the same level of tech awareness/care. And I'm only talking about people who read the likes of Engadget, Lifehacker, Slashdot, etc. Tech is important, but it's not *that* important. And I stopped listening to TWiT because of all the trumpet blowing "look at me" people, sometimes there were good ones, (I believe one week there was Ryan Block, Veronica and Tom), but I got sick of the rest.

Yeah, I have about 2 friends that are into the whole "Web 2.0" stuff as much as me, Twitter, Google Docs, blogging even, and all that kind of stuff. My girlfriend just shakes her head at me when I'm "twittering" on my phone while we're out. And where I am, there's no real meetups at all, not for Google, Engadget, or anything else I'm interested in. (I'm not expecting anyone from SF or the like to come over here to Australia, but we don't have *any* reader meetups). Still, it means I'm relegated to talking to few people about the web, tech, media, Apple, Microsoft, Google and everything else. But hey, there's always blogs, and of course the Buzz Out Loud Lounge and the IRC chat!

It's really just a question of how long it takes for this stuff to happen.
Progress doesn't stop because of mainstream ignorance.

Through to people slowly progressing from one skill/experience level to the next. Eventually mainstream will be aware of it.
Just observe the history of the desktop computer, from geeks in the 70's to offices in the 80's to consumers in the 90's.
Or digital music, from geeks in the 90's, to everyone today thanks to the iPod.
We're just in the early stages today, the revolutions coming are already seen by the geeks.

mass transit is horrable in most major cities.

i drive in nashville to work and back.. its just not practical to even think of public transportation.

If you live and breath "tech" it's important. If you don't. It's not.

There is a lot of "if all you have is a hammer, everthing looks like a nail to you" in the world. Including Web 2.0 stuff.