There are two new-ish Radio Berkman interviews up: Me talking with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger about his book that argues that we are in danger of forgetting how to forget, and Russell Neuman on learning from the past of the media.

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The Berkman Center has posted the raw audio of my 55 minute interview with Stephen Wolfram, about his deeply cool WolframAlpha program (which he talked about here yesterday). On the other hand, if you wait a few days, you can skip some throat-clearing on my part, as well as my driving him down an alley based on my not seeing where WolframAlpha puts links to other pieces of information. As is so often the case, the edited version will be better.

[Tags: wolfram wolframalpha metadata search google semantic_web ontologies taxonomy everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Doug Kaye keeps on polishing SpokenWord.org, a free site that collects spoken word podcasts (well, it only collects pointers to them) and lets you find, rate, discuss, and hear them. You can also add ones links to ones you like to the collection (i.e., share them). SpokenWord is getting quite useful and usable. Give it a try. (Disclosure: I’m on its board of directors; it’s a non-profit.)

[Tags: podcasts media ]

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Peter Suber gave a terrific talk last week, hosted by the Berkman Center. Afterwards, I sat down with him for a podcast on the politics around open access.

[Tags: peter_suber open_access podcasts knowledge libraries journals publishing ]

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Douglas Kaye, founder of IT Conversations and the Conversations Network, has launched SpokenWord.org. Here’s part of the announcement:

There are perhaps millions of audio and video spoken-word
recordings on the Internet. Think of all those lectures,
interviews, speeches, conferences, meetings, radio and TV
programs and podcasts. No matter how obscure the topic,
someone has recorded and published it on line.

But how do you find it?

SpokenWord.org is a new free on-line service that helps you
find, manage and share audio and video spoken-word
recordings, regardless of who produced them or where
they’re published. All of the recordings in the
SpokenWord.org database are discovered on the Internet and
submitted to our database by members like you.

This is another public-spirited work from a public-spirited guy who has assembled and inspired a public-spirited collective. [Disclosure: I'm on the board of advisers.]

[Tags: spokenword aggregators collaboration doug_kaye douglas_kaye ]

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The latest Radio Berkman podcast is with David Hornik of August Capital. David is delightful — not always the term applied to VCs — and finds some reasons for optimism in the current darkling gloom. [Tags: berkman podcasts radio_berkman david_hornik vcs recession innovation ]

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On the Radio Berkman podcast this week, Persephone Miel, lead author on the Media Re:Public paper series, talks about what’s missing from the new journalism landscape. Then, Patricia Aufderheide, Director of the Center for Social Media, discusses the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. Finally, Jessica Clark, Director of the Future of Public Media Project gives her top five predictions for digital media in 2009. All in 25 minutes.

Radio Berkman will be back next year, thanks to Daniel Jones, the producer, who has been doing a fantastic job with it.

[Tags: berkman media citizen_media participatory_media we_media podcasts ]

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Well, hate is too strong a word. But so is love.

Anyway, here’s a segment I did for the public radio show [Tags: kindle ebooks amazon everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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In this week’s Radio Berkman podcast, I interview Stephen Schultze about the FCC’s auctioning off spectrum to a national provider who would be required to use 25% of it for free, nationwide wifi. There’s only one catch: That wifi would have to only connect to sites and services that are safe for minors (defined as people between 5 and 18).

After we had recorded this interview last week, the FCC postponed voting on the proposal, and since it’s the baby of the outgoing Chair, it’s probably postponed forever. Still, the idea raises some really interesting issues. Steve and I focus on the free speech considerations, although the opposition from other spectrum-holders certainly could not have encouraged the FCC.

[Tags: berkman fcc wifi wi-fi spectrum free_speech censorship kevin_martin podcast stephen_schultze ]

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In the latest Radio Berkman podcast, Prof. Charles Nesson and Joel Tennenbaum explain their countersuit against the RIAA, claiming that the RIAA should be forbidden on Constitutional grounds from suing people for sharing music files. Charlie’s analogy is to Congress passing a law that charges $750-$150,000 for each mile we go over the speed limit, and then allows a private company to fund itself by enforcing the law, and allows them to take bribes (“settlements”). He says the RIAA is using the federal courts as a collection agency. If the law is a criminal statute, which Charlie argues it in effect is, then private parties should not be able to pursue civil suits to enforce it.

If Charlie and Joel win, it would shut down the RIAA’s hyper-aggressive tactics. And, although Charlie does not say this, it seems to me that it might open up some interesting class action suits from those who have had to pay up.[Tags: podcasts radio_berkman charlie_nesson charles_nesson joel_tennenbaum riaa copyright copyleft ]

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