Throwback Thursday: That time I was on public radio

September 9, 2008 to be exact. Listen here.

Many of us use it every day and have trouble remembering life without it.  The usefulness and ubiquity of the Internet has made looking for information as easy as pushing a button.  The personal computer created an Internet where anyone with a keyboard could be master and commander of the World Wide Web. Now,Internet-centered products — such as iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos — can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors and are killing the innovation of the once-open Internet according Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

In a new book titled The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It, Zittrain argues that the Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Zittrain reasons that the seemingly endless Internet is on a path to tighter security— such as car GPS systems reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on occupants.

Today Michael Sauers, the “Travelin’ Librarian” from the Nebraska Library Commission talks with guest host Stephen Steigman about how the salvation of the Internet lies in the hands of the users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, we’ll discuss how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, and participate in solutions. We’ll look at the role technology is playing in library services (both good and bad) and we’ll examine search engines and how to use the latest Web 2.0 – from improving basic search skills and evaluating search results to making the best use of search engines. We’ll also discuss digital rights management, creative commons, and other copyright issues.

Posted in bigthink, Internet, Tech Tagged with: #TBT, radio

Do Space on NET Radio

For the past week NET Radio has been running stories on the future of libraries in Nebraska titled Libraries: The Next Chapter. This morning, the fifth and final installment, all about Do Space was broadcast. Check it out below here or head on over to the original @ NET Radio.

Posted in Do Space, Libraries Tagged with: radio

Arbitron

Posted in Fun Tagged with: radio, survey

Friday Video: Ira Glass (Talks @ Google)

Ira Glass is the award-winning host and executive producer of the documentary radio program “This American Life,” produced by Chicago Public Media and distributed by Public Radio International. The program began in 1995 and is now heard on over 500 public radio stations each week, by more than 3 million people, and is downloaded as a podcast more than 900,000 times weekly.

Watch Ira Glass in discussion with Googler Logan Ury on topics including his favorite episodes, thoughts on technology, and what it was like to see himself mentioned on “The O.C.”

(Contains adult language.)

Posted in video Tagged with: google, npr, radio, this american life

Dragnet on the Radio

The Internet Archive has 298 of the 1950’s Dragnet radio show available for free downloading in their Old Time Radio section. Be sure to browse for other classics while you’re there.

Posted in Fun Tagged with: cops, mystery, radio

Open Book: Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman talks to Mariella Frostrup about his hugely popular Science fiction/ fantasy works for both adults and children alike and why he continues to be inspired by the thing lurking just out of sight in the shadows.

Posted in Books Tagged with: author, bbc, neil gaiman, radio

Neil Gaiman’s Guardian Books podcast: Weird London and the future for writers

This week’s podcast heads into strange territory, guided by the Books site’s editor-for-a-day, Neil Gaiman.

First, we follow Damien Walter on the trail of Weird London, a parallel city that has been built on the banks of another Thames by writers of fantasy fiction. He explores why the capital has made such fertile ground for writers who look beyond the real, along with Tom Pollock, M John Harrison and the owner of the Atlantis Bookshop, Geraldine Beskin.

Back in the studio, Cory Doctorow outlines how the digital revolution is transforming writers’ lives. But how are authors to make money? The agent Jonny Geller and the head of Faber Digital, Henry Volans, investigate how writers can survive in a new publishing landscape.

We finish with a live reading by Neil Gaiman of the haunting story he contributed to the Guardian’s Water stories, Down to a Sunless Sea.

Listen @ Guardian.co.uk.

Posted in Audio, Books, Fun Tagged with: cory doctorow, neil gaiman, radio, uk

When Patents Attack… Part Two!

On this week’s episode of This American Life:

Two years ago, we did a program about a mysterious business in Texas that threatens companies with lawsuits for violating its patents. But the world of patent lawsuits is so secretive, there were basic questions we could not answer. Now we can. And we get a glimpse why people say our patent system may be discouraging, not encouraging, innovation.

Posted in Internet Tagged with: npr, patents, podcast, podcasting, radio, this american life

Stephen King on Fresh Air

For 20 years, Stephen King has had an image stuck in his head: It’s a boy in a wheelchair flying a kite on a beach. “It wanted to be a story, but it wasn’t a story,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. But little by little, the story took shape around the image — and focused on an amusement park called “Joyland” located just a little farther down the beach.

King’s new thriller is set in North Carolina in 1973. Joyland has a horror house and a torture chamber, but it’s not exactly a horror novel. The park’s fun house may be haunted by a ghost — which may explain the dead bodies — but the book isn’t exactly a supernatural thriller, either. Instead, the book combines elements of crime, horror and the supernatural. The main character is a college student who aspires to write for The New Yorker. After his heart is broken by his girlfriend, he wants to get away from New England and takes a job in North Carolina, at the Joyland amusement park, where he enters a different world.

As King — who is also the author of such horror, mystery and crime classics as Carrie, The Shining and It — began writing the book, the amusement park atmosphere he began with turned more lurid, more “carny,” more influenced by the state fairs and local carnivals of his youth in rural Maine.

“The more carny it got, the better I liked it, actually,” he says, “and I started to go to websites that had various carny language, some of which I remembered a little: pitchmen called ‘shy bosses’ and their concessions called ‘shies,’ and the little places where they sold tickets and sometimes sat down to rest called ‘doghouses,’ and other stuff I just made up, like calling pretty girls ‘points.’ “

Read the full article and listen to the interview @ NPR.org.

Posted in Books Tagged with: hard case crime, npr, pulp, radio, stephen king

30 posts in 30 days #4: Librarians on the radio

Last week I listened to an episode of The Diane Rhem Show titled “The Changing Role of Public Libraries” which featured Sari Feldman, executive director, Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Public Library; president, Public Library Association, John Hill, president of the D.C. Public Libraries Board of Trustees; CEO of the Federal City Council and Camila Alire, president, American Library Association.

While the show was well done, and informative, by the end I kept thinking that there was something missing. The panelists talked about “branches” closing, and budgets being cut, and their library’s unionized workforce, I kept thinking that almost none of that applied to the vast majority of libraries here in Nebraska.

In Nebraska (and also in Iowa and maybe in other states) almost all public libraries are local institutions in single buildings without any branches at all. Forget unions, in many cases the library is lucky if the librarian has an MLS. There are annual book budgets out there that can be measured in the hundreds of dollars.

I’m all for national exposure of the problem, but how about some representation from the little libraries that have been struggling all along next time?

Tagged with: 30x30, libraries, npr, radio