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Okay, so what is asynchronism?

It's the separation of when an event occurs and when it's observed.

Radio and TV are pretty much synchronous media. You have to be tuned in and listening/watching if you want to catch what's being broadcast - or at least that's the way it used to be before we got tape recorders and VCRs.

Music albums on CD however, are an asynchronous medium. They can be listened to at any time, and repeatedly, long after they were actually recorded.

Most of the services you access through the Net are asynchronous in nature.

The creation of a webpage is asynchronous with its viewing, the reading of an email is often asynchronous to its writing/sending, etc, etc.

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Of course there are a growing number of synchronous events and services appearing on the Net (IM, live audio/video streams, etc) -- but it's still largely an asynchronous medium.

What I like most about modern technology is that it allows you to convert a synchronous medium into an asynchronous one.

Going out for the night but want to catch your favourite TV programme and watch it when you return? Just set the VCR or PVR.

Miss something interesting on NatRad's Nine-to-Noon show? Just drop into the website and listen to the archived audio stream.

And now we have Podcasting -- yet another asynchronous medium made possible by modern technology.

I see that the BBC has spotted the potential of this medium and are gradually making an increasing amount of its content available - good for them!

Could it be that, as the Net becomes an increasingly viable and important vehicle for delivering digital content, we will see a growing move away from synchronous media to asynchronous ones?

For example: why do you watch the 6 o'clock TV news at 6pm? Simply because that's when it's on and it's really not worth the hassle of setting up a tape -- right?

But, if you could have the 6 o'clock news on at any time simply by downloading a copy from the Net straight to your TV, wouldn't that be a whole lot more convenient?

Net users are already switching to asynchronous TV programme delivery in droves anyway. I've been told that P2P networks are now one of the key sources of TV programmes for a growing percentage of people.

Why wait 12 months until a local broadcaster buys the latest series of your favourite programme then sit through the interminable adds every 8 minutes when instead, you can download the same material, burn it to a CD/DVD and watch it when *you* want to?

What I'd like to see is TVNZ or TV3 start making some of their own local productions available for download and burning to disk over the Net.

Remember that many of these productions have been funded by NZ On Air so we (taxpayers) have already paid for them so they should be free anyway.

There's a wealth of locally produced TV I never get to watch -- because it's synchronous media, I was busy, and the VCR was recording something else at the time.

There's the challenge Kiwi broadcasters -- will you join the rest of us in the future *now* or after you've got no option?

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