AfterTV

John Battelle

  

Google is more than the story of some misty, happy start-up. As long as mankind exists, we will now have a digital artifact of what we’ve looked for, and what we’ve found, and what we’ve interacted with. As the Internet swallows all other forms of communication, and all that becomes indexed and tracked, everything we do with it will become knowable, not known but knowable. That is a pretty profound shift in our culture. One that gets to the edge of science fiction. — John Battelle.

Wired Magazine, The Industry Standard, Federated Media: These are only three of the things that John Battelle has done with the Web in the past ten years. And there’s more to come.

In this  interview  with Andrew Keen, Battelle casts a keen eye on what is past, and passing and to come in the Brave New Internet. Google, the subject of his latest book, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture is only one of these.

LISTEN TO KEEN AND BATTELLE

Richard Landry

The Man Who Brings the Nation to the Nation:

“In the United States today, five companies control the majority of all media revenue: Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Time-Warner, News Corporation…. From the standpoint of revenues, the Internet is the most consolidated media ever in the United States…. When you look at the revenue flow from the Internet it is all going into the pockets of Yahoo, Google, Reuters and the AP…. In the Blogosphere… we’ve got millions of blogs, but only a handful that are generating enough money to sustain the operations of those people that are producing them. And that revenue is ia direct function of their ability to actually crack through the Blogosphere and gain some visibility.” — Richard Landry

Just how do all the small circulation news and opinion magazines get on (some) news stands around the country? Richard Landry and the Independent Press Association have a lot to do with it.

Richard Landry is executive director of the Independent Press Association, a non-profit organization whose mission is to amplify the power of independent media so as to foster a more just, open, and democratic society. The IPA supports the growth and development of over 525 independent magazines, newspapers, and web sites throughout North America.

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Jaron Lanier

And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it’s now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn’t make it any less dangerous.” from Jaron Lanier’s Digital Maoism.

Andrew Keen has lunch with Jaron Lanier, Web Visionary, to discuss the unfortunate effect of online mobs, the luminous life and tragic death of Alan Turing, the future of artificial intelligence and the dubious sexuality of Second Life avatars.

LISTEN TO KEEN AND LANIER

Brad Templeton

“Because the Internet is entirely made of private property, things like the First and Fourth Amendments do not necessarily apply.” Internet pioneer and current Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Brad Templeton discusses how the Net does not give you the protections you might think you have, and the intricacies of copy-right control in the digital age.

LISTEN TO KEEN AND TEMPLETON