You car radio can be randomly accessed; you can tune into any station along the dial, although you generally have a few favourites. Rather than wear your dial out, and to save on car accidents, car stereos developed presets. Now, in the digital age, we still tune in somewhere along the spectrum from one side of the frequency bands to the other, but we still float back and forth and jump to faves.
Television grew quickly from just a few channels to many. I remember the dial on my mother’s most advanced TV was still only rated for about a dozen channels. We propped a cable box on top and the little 2-number LED display could suddenly get all the way to 99 channels. Obviously, it made no sense to flip through the channels linearly, so it came with a number pad.
Even more significantly, it came with a remote control.
(Yes, this is eventually about podcasting..) View full article »