We like to think that what we do is cool, hip and so on, but also that it is somewhat known and accepted within our social group. This came to my mind because I’ve just remembered some conversations I’d had at the workplace.

My colleagues are about the same age as me and have or are working towards a university degree in the field of informatics / computer science. They are a group I feel part of.

Still, awareness about new media is pretty low even in this group. Almost all of them have heard about blogs, however (as far as I know) I’m the only one who actually blogs. A few use an RSS reader to follow some blogs, but most of them still manually check news sites. Almost nobody (including my boss, who is a very smart and very technical fellow – for example he runs Slackware not Ubuntu :-P) has heard about podcasts.

My conclusion is: our new media microcosm is much smaller than we thought. On the bright side: there is more room to grow than we thought possible, including a large body of technically savvy people who know what MP3 is and what devices they can use to listen to it.