Jim Eyrich of the University of Illinois and Bobbi Hardy from CITES join us. Jim works for the National Center for Supercomputering Applications and Bobbi is a User Services Specialist at the CITES Help Desk. Whether you’re looking for a new computer or tablet, have questions about online security, or need some troubleshooting advice, they’re happy to help.
According to the Association of American Publishers, last year, for the first time, e-books garnered more revenue than any other format of adult fiction. Overall, net sales revenue for electronic books more than doubled in 2011 compared to 2010, and there’s every reason to believe that transition will continue here in 2012 and beyond.
Meanwhile, the industry has felt the effects of the bankruptcy and closures of Borders stores nationwide, another signal of a rapidly changing industry.
As more people download novels to their Kindles and Nooks, what’s to become of the publishing industry? Could we see a day when actual physical books are no longer printed? Is what’s happening with the newspaper and magazine industries a harbinger of things to come for books?
Jules Polonetsky, Director and Co-Chair, Future of Privacy forum
Frances Harris, Librarian, University Laboratory High School, Urbana
Host: Craig Cohen
Filing Cabinets
As we share more and more of our lives on sites like Facebook and Twitter, privacy questions naturally arise. But so does the issue of how long this material will stay around - perhaps much longer than any of us had originally intended. In an age of social media and digital archiving, can we escape from what we have posted or written online? Is the internet compiling a "permanent record" of our lives, the one grade school teachers and principals have been warning students of for decades?
Garret Keizer, contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, contributing writer to Mother Jones, recent Guggenheim Fellow
Host: Craig Cohen
Privacy Book Cover
In his book Privacy, Garret Keizer begins by noting how the word “sharing” today has almost everything to do with personal information, and almost nothing to do with personal wealth. Keizer sees a link between shrinking personal privacy and a growing gap between rich and poor. He maintains privacy has long been thought of as a value that came along with the growth of the middle class, and now that the middle class is shrinking, so, naturally, is privacy. We’ll discuss what privacy means in 21st century America – and just what sort of impact political, economic, or cultural influences have on it. From concerns over security to the rise of technology designed to make our lives easier, but requiring more and more access to information we once considered personal, is there even room for such privacy anymore?
Virginia Eubanks, Department of Women’s Studies at the University at Albany, author of Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age
Host: Craig Cohen
As the online world developed in the 1990s, so did a belief that such technology, if distributed evenly across communities, could be a vehicle for social equality – that if everyone had the same access to the same information, it would put everyone on an equal footing.
Virginia Eubanks believed that, and saw the web as that great equalizer, and a fundamental social justice issue in American cities. She built her career around the idea. By the early 2000s, she concluded she was wrong. We’ll welcome your questions for Virginia Eubanks, author of Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Digital Age. Eubanks will present a free lecture on this topic at the Champaign Public Library on Wednesday, September 12th at 5:30 p.m. (That event is sponsored by the proposed Center for Digital Inclusion at the Graduate School for Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois).
Nicholas Carr, Writer
Host: David Inge
This is a repeat broadcast from Friday, July 30, 2010, 11 am
Evgeny Morozov, Journalist
Host: David Inge
This is a repeat broadcast from Thursday, February 24, 2011, 10 am
This is a repeat broadcast from Thursday, May 24, 2012, 10 am
Irfan S. Ahmad, Ph.D., Executive Director, Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, University of Illiniois
Yi Lu, Ph.D., Jay and Ann Schenck Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois
Host: David Inge
Many scientists believe that nanotechnology, a field that involves engineering on a very small scale, has great potential to change both our economy and the way we live. At the nanoscale, materials we know well can have very different properties, making them valuable for a wide range of products. We’ll look at recent developments in this field here at the University of Illinois. We’ll have two guests, Irfan Ahmad, associate director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and Yi Lu, professor of chemistry.
Peter N. Stearns, Provost and University Professor, George Mason University; Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Social History
Host: David Inge
In the affluent, industrial societies of the world today, life is good. Most people live long lives, without fear of plague, famine or war. So why is there depression, anxiety, unfulfilled longing? In short, why has abundance not led to greater happiness? That’s the question we’ll take up with our guest, historian Peter Stearns. We’ll talk about some of the ideas in his book "Satisfaction Not Guaranteed." The book looks at the ways people in the past thought about progress, and asks whether we can be truly happy in the modern world.
