As a high schooler circa 2001-2005, I was a big fan of Slashdot, and
eventually came across their old "internet radio" program Geeks in
Space, a podcast before that word was invented. I found it fascinating,
even though all the stories were years out of date by the time I heard
the shows; living in a small town with only dialup internet access, this
was sort of a peek at a weird wider world where people ran Linux on
their laptops and talked about RAID arrays and T-1 connections.

The show is archived at http://audio.textfiles.com/shows/geeksinspace/
and if you can get past the terrible audio quality, it's a fascinating
look back at Internet culture and technology circa 1999/2000. At least,
I think so, but I may be biased -- listening to it will forever remind
me of riding the school bus with the marching band, listening to a
burned CD with a bunch of old episodes on it.

Any other proto-podcasts people have fond memories of, that you might
recommend to the casual listener? Stuff that, like Geeks In Space, came
out before the word "podcast" was invented.

john

On Wed, 21 Jun 2023 05:30:01 +0000, John wrote:

> As a high schooler circa 2001-2005, I was a big fan of Slashdot, and
> eventually came across their old "internet radio" program Geeks in
> Space, a podcast before that word was invented. I found it fascinating,
> even though all the stories were years out of date by the time I heard
> the shows; living in a small town with only dialup internet access, this
> was sort of a peek at a weird wider world where people ran Linux on
> their laptops and talked about RAID arrays and T-1 connections.
>
> The show is archived at http://audio.textfiles.com/shows/geeksinspace/
> and if you can get past the terrible audio quality, it's a fascinating
> look back at Internet culture and technology circa 1999/2000. At least,
> I think so, but I may be biased -- listening to it will forever remind
> me of riding the school bus with the marching band, listening to a
> burned CD with a bunch of old episodes on it.
>
> Any other proto-podcasts people have fond memories of, that you might
> recommend to the casual listener? Stuff that, like Geeks In Space, came
> out before the word "podcast" was invented.
>
> john

Internet Talk Radio from the 90's:

https://town.hall.org/

Including "Geek of the Week", from 1993 and 94:

https://town.hall.org/radio/Geek/

Carl Malamud hosts.

Love that old-timey radio. We used to gather 'round
the computer and listen to the latest download, painstakingly
retrieved over our campus' 56kbit ADN connection[*].

[*] an X.25 pad took up half the connection, so it was
effectively 28.8kbit...

--
-v

vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> writes:
> Internet Talk Radio from the 90's:
>
> https://town.hall.org/
>
> Including "Geek of the Week", from 1993 and 94:
>
> https://town.hall.org/radio/Geek/
>
> Carl Malamud hosts.
>
> Love that old-timey radio. We used to gather 'round
> the computer and listen to the latest download, painstakingly
> retrieved over our campus' 56kbit ADN connection[*].
>
> [*] an X.25 pad took up half the connection, so it was
> effectively 28.8kbit...

Thanks for this, 93-94 predates my involvement in much of anything
computer-related except for playing Commander Keen on the family PC, so
I'll have to take a listen.

john