Author: Jenny

Welcome to ThoughtCast, an online watering hole for ideas. Our focus is on conversations with authors, academics and intellectuals. I’m Jenny Attiyeh, the host and producer.
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Public Radio goes Hollywood!

Note: This piece has been picked up by KYOU Radio, in San Francisco, and it’s also been mentioned on Current.org and the PRPD site — thanks for that!

Public radio could easily be described as a smashing success story. Take NPR, for example. From its counter-cultural roots in the early 1970s, it has grown to become one of the most trusted sources of journalism in the United States. Although it still is accused of liberal bias, an equal number of liberals and conservatives find themselves drawn to its reassuring sound. So – what’s the problem? Like newspapers and symphony orchestras, public radio has a graying audience and it is having trouble attracting younger people and minorities. So today, in order to stay viable, public radio’s job is to reach out to new listeners. But at what cost, if any?
ThoughtCast attended the Public Radio Program Directors Association conference this September in Hollywood, and spoke with:

Jeff Hansen, program director at KUOW in Seattle
Mike Crane, COO of Wisconsin Public Radio
John Voci, the general manager of WGBH radio in Boston
Jennifer Ferro, assistant general manager of KCRW in Santa Monica
Sam Fleming, managing director of news and programs at WBUR, Boston
Chris Bannon, program director of WNYC in New York City.

Click here: to listen (7 minutes).

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“The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It”!!!

Note: This program was broadcast on the public radio station WCVE.
Cyber law expert Jonathan Zittrain is one of the canniest thinkers out there, pondering the wide world of the web, and his new book is called The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It. It’s a call to arms. Before it’s too late, he says, we must make sure the Internet stays in our hands – not in those of industries like Verizon, or Apple, seductive as their services might seem at times. Anybody say iPhone??
Click here: to listen (5 1/2 minutes).
For those to whom Jonathan is a new phenomenon, he is the co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, a professor at Harvard Law School, and also the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University. He’s an expert on Internet law.

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Griefer, Google Cooking and other Neologisms

Note: This piece was broadcast on Word of Mouth on New Hampshire Public Radio and on WCVE in Richmond VA.
Today’s online world is in overdrive. Think of it as a novelty factory – spewing out new ideas, products, and neologisms – new words, or phrases. Take the word blog, for example, or broadband. These are now old-hat neologisms even my mother would recognize. But neologisms can also be existing words that acquire new meaning, like the term spam. Or the word friend – that’s now a verb! People friend each other on social networking sites like Facebook all the time!
So what better place to look for neologisms than at a conference devoted to the “Future of the Internet”, held by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Click here: to listen to Esther Dyson, Jimmy Wales, Tim Wu and Judith Donath (4 minutes). Or check out this 1 minute video with MIT Media Lab assoc. professor and Harvard fellow Judith Donath…

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To friend or not to friend: Judith Donath on online social status

Have you “friended” someone recently? Have you ever? Sooner or later, we’ll all start to friend, or be friended, if we are to inhabit the jolly online world of social networking. MIT Media Lab’s Judith Donath explains….

Click here: (4:17 minutes)


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Ethan Zuckerman’s homage to homophily

Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices waxes lyrical on the term homophily, which isn’t actually a web word, but it’s a phenomenon playing itself out on the Internet. Click here for clarification!

(2:20 minutes)

And to listen to a discussion with Ethan Zuckerman on the Forum Network, click here!


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More Neologisms with TPM’s Josh Marshall

Here are a few more thoughts on new words gleaned from life online — gathered at a Berkman Center conference on The Future of the Internet!
Joshua Micah Marshall, who founded the influential site Talking Points Memo discusses the term “blogger”, a now old neologism that may have outgrown its usefulness, at least to him!
Click here: (2:30 minutes) to listen. And let us know if you agree!



And here on this YouTube video, Josh Marshall tells Jenny Attiyeh how he came up with the name “Talking Points Memo”…



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