Technology

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The Promise of Open Media

(Note: This program is featured on the Socialbrite and P2P Foundation websites — thanks for that!)

At the first ever Open Video Conference, held at New York University in Manhattan, participants pondered the significance of the open media movement, at a time when its tools are being put to use by protesters in Iran.  The social networking tools Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have revolutionized communication, and impacted events as they unfold.

ThoughtCast spoke with Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing fame, Peter Kaufman, the CEO of Intelligent Television, and Dean Jansen with the Participatory Culture Foundation, among others, about the potential of this movement to effect social change.

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Turbulent Times for Truth Tellers? Just ask the Nieman Foundation…

This year’s Narrative Journalism conference, sponsored by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation, was titled “Telling True Stories in Turbulent Times.” With magazines folding and newspapers shrinking, these are hard days for narrative journalists: they need space, time and funding to do their work, all of which are in short supply in today’s web-driven media economy.  ThoughtCast spoke with several of the presenters at the conference, including keynote speaker and Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, award-winning author and journalist Adam Hochschild, and Nieman’s own Joshua Benton. The title does indeed appear to be apt…

To watch this ThoughtCast program on the Forum Network, click here!

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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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Doug Kaye at the IMA

Doug Kaye, who spoke at the 2007 Integrated Media Association conference, is the co-founder of the pioneering podcast on information technology called IT Conversations, the CTO of GigaVox Media, and the CEO of the Conversations Network. But Doug is hardly resting on his laurels, as you’ll hear in this ThoughtCast interview. (Oh yeah, he blogs and writes books too!)
Click here: to listen (4 minutes)

P.S… photo credit goes to Chris Pirillo!

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