From GMSV:

Q  U  O  T  E  D

“John Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. No argument, it was true, they were. Well, even though the vast majority of people have never heard of Steve [Gillmor] or myself, we’re more influential than John Lennon or Bob Dylan ever were. We’re media hackers.”

– Scripting News proprietor Dave Winer’s last words before his ego exploded.

One sincerely hopes Winer was being self-deprecating. No single human’s ego (Steve Jobs excluded) can conceivably be that large and overblown.

I think podcasting is great, and like blogging it’s fantastic how it puts the power of voice, and distribution of that voice, directly into the hands of the individual. Very liberating, and definitely shaking up established media and broadcasting formats.

However I still don’t think it’s earthshattering. Podcasting is simply another way to publish and consume content, in this case audio. Yes, it will probably evolve its own stars (or just borrow them from mainstream…hello Mr. Limbaugh), and yes it will force current media business models to evolve. Yes, it’s got tons of hype and visibility – it’s the digerati meme du jour (oh wait, “media hackers” is the meme du jour. My bad). Podcasting thrives on the hackers and the passionate amateurs now, and that’s where it’s democratizing influence is most convincingly demonstrated.

But in the end, as listener expectations around production quality increase, the best of the content producers will turn to advertising to make a living, will start banding together to reach larger audiences and be more attractive to advertisers, and will form the next gen of “mainstream media.” Look at IT Conversations – great stuff, but that’s really just professional talk radio in a nifty new delivery format. Like a technical pro-revenue NPR, streamed through my computer.

The content that will be most listened to, and that will carry the most influence, will end up being the more polished stuff that we listen to today through other formats. Except we’ll get it via RSS on our computers and listen on demand, and maybe have some new names. The format will change, but the ultimate influencers here, 10 years from now, will probably look a hell of a lot like the one’s we all listen to today on the car radio on the way in to work, punctuated by an occasional “word from our sponsor.”

The podcast trailblazers of today will eventually acquire all the trappings of the mainstream media they so despise. Why? Because they too need to make a living and crave the respect and attention they feel they deserve. Hell, we even now have a “Media Bloggers Association” which screams “we want mainstream legitimacy” to me.

I’m not disparaging podcasting as a concept – I do think it’s a fantastic, liberating medium that will help further the grassroots media shift going on, at least at the beginning. Very healthy. Definitely should help drive the idea of media broadcasting as a business in some interesting new directions that are better for the end listener in the long run. I applaud Winer and Curry and that whole crowd for spurring those changes on.

But in terms of world changing influence, Winer needs to relax a bit and come to grips with reality. Lennon and Dylan changed the world by driving emotions, by providing anthems for generations. By giving people a soundtrack to their lives.

Winer and friends built the nuts and bolts of a new way to produce and deliver audio content. They are enablers of change, and should get credit for that. But please Dave, let’s get a grip and stop reading your own (or podcasting’s) press.