Topic: Media

Moira speaks with Fresh Air commentator and linguist Geoff Nunberg, who discusses his book The Years of Talking Dangerously and assesses the impact of words in a dynamic, changing world. In the book, he explains why grammar buffs are drawn to sarcasm, and deftly unpacks the telling phrases of our national conversation, from progressive to elite to change, as well as the national conversation itself.

Dave Winer discusses how Twitter and other social networking tools are changing the way that people read and react to the news. He talks about how the new ways to keep track of events have changed over the years and how these new methods are also likely to change. He also reviews his work in Twitter stats and what we can learn from them as well as where things may go next.

Entrepreneur and evangelist Malcolm Matson traces the evolution of today's captive network access model and describes the nature of an intriguing alternative: the open public local access network. Matson posits a simple, but profound question: will our conversations be truly ours, or will they be subject to the governance of a monopolistic access provider whose interests may not align with our own?

MySpace, Flicker, YouTube, and Facebook are big brands and major movers in the commercial, social networking world. In this 2008 Nonprofit Management Institute talk, an event convened by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Jeff Patrick of Common Knowledge shares how nonprofits can use such tools--and customize their own--to capture constituencies and raise funds. He further shows where social networking is headed so that nonprofits can begin to incorporate it into their long-term horizons.

Sara Nelson of Publishers Weekly takes a closer look at some of the things you think you know about the book business. She also raises the questions, "Why should we care about books any more?" and doesn't anyone read books for pleasure today? Topics range from what kinds of books we read, how the book industry advertise its products, the issue of piracy in today's electronic society, and why we are a long way from doing away with books completely.

Ken Brooks of Cengage Learning discusses the challenges of mixing digital and print media publishing together efficiently and economically. He also discusses how moving from a low scale craft process to a high scale impact process model improves not only productivity but profitability.

Geo is impacting many industries including automotive, retail, telecom and advertising. Emerging from these current technologies are applications for the GeoWeb, GeoMobile, GeoCar, and GeoVoice. These entrenched industries are wide-open for investments and this presentation provides some guidance and perspective for those looking to cash in. In this show, Dev Khare, partner at VC firm Venrock, discusses the current landscape on the GeoWeb from a VC perspective.

Kathy Sierra and Tim O'Reilly discuss the principles behind "creating passionate users" and how this energizes and increases consumers. They discuss how in today's competitive marketplace, every business is looking for an edge. This typically forces business leaders to face the challenge of making their products different. However, that can be more difficult than it sounds and the business landscape is littered with the carcasses of companies who failed to differentiate themselves or their products.

Bill Burger describes the social disruption happening in the publishing industry because of new technologies and business models for content distribution. He shares several examples of these disruptive new models for content publishing and gives advice to publishers on staying relevant in these changing times when people value the technology that brings them the content they want as much as the content itself.

Jeremy Silver discusses why the world of music in the internet age is on the edge of enormous change, but not on the edge of disaster. Silver reviews the recent difficult history of the music industry since the growth of the internet. He sees positive signs in the many areas of experimentation in music activity. Although the new business models are not proven, there is tremendous energy at work.