Technology and Culture

The Apple iPhone is just the latest example of media convergence- combining different types of media into a single device. In this case…a phone, web browser and music player. But as technology becomes more and more advanced and more and more consolidated, response to it is becoming split. On the one hand you have tech-heads who love the ease and power of new technology and adopt all the newest gadgets and on the other hand you have those who are “going analog”…giving up the electronic PDA in favor of a dependable Moleskine notebook, declaring email bankruptcy and even foregoing the cell phone altogether. We’ll take a look at where technology is headed and how people are dealing with it.

Guests

• Nancy Hanger, writer and columnist for technology magazines such as BYTE.com and WIRED News. She writes a blog about technology, book publishing, and living in New England called The Red Pencil Diaries and runs Windhaven, a company which handles book publishing production.
• Jim Barry, media spokesperson for the Consumer Electronics Association, former editor of Video magazine, 20-year veteran of consumer, trade and custom magazine publishing and visiting lecturer at the Boston University School of Communication.