In the summer of 2003, articles started popping up about a curious recurring phenomenon in New York City. Large crowds, organized via forwarded emails, were congregating in public places to perform absurd acts that were over almost as soon as they began. The so-called "Flash Mobs" were imitated in other cities, and countries. Through it all, the man who hatched the idea remained anonymous. Until now. Flash Mob inventor (and Harper's senior editor) Bill Wasik reveals to Brooke what the stunt was all about.
Iran may not be the safest place for journalists, but that hasn't prevented the growth of online expression there. There are now more than 100,000 Iranian bloggers, and Persian is by one count the blogosphere's third most common language. Outside observers see the thriving blogosphere as a catalyst for political change, but New Republic columnist Joseph Braude disagrees. He tells guest host Xeni Jardin why he thinks the Internet might actually serve to maintain the repressive status quo.
The benevolent search engine-that-could was showered with boos this week, after it agreed to cooperate with Chinese government censors. To many, the move signaled a complete turnaround from the principled stand Google has taken against the U.S. government. But even in that skirmish, legal scholar Tim Wu was less than impressed with Google. He tells Bob how the company made itself vulnerable to government intrusion in the first place.
With Google subpoenas and NSA wiretaps in the news, the struggle begins in earnest for what has long been privacy advocates' Holy Grail: online anonymity. The latest advance in "computer cloaking" was unveiled this month at a hacker convention in Washington, D.C. Brooke speaks with Wired News reporter Quinn Norton about the new technology and the kind of information it is designed to protect.
Picture the scenario: computer users worldwide wake up one Tuesday morning to find their hard drives smoking, victims of a malicious virus designed to wreak the maximum possible havoc. Internet maven Jonathan Zittrain thinks it's not a matter of if, but when. He tells Brooke that unless we act now, a "9/11 moment" for the Internet could result in a Patriot Act-like backlash that would stifle all sorts of e-innovation.
For some, Google stands for a new model in advertising, and reflects the increasingly interconnected nature of our media and economy. But do we really want total omnigooglization, as the French call it? Brooke speaks with Matt Thompson, creator of an eight-minute Internet movie entitled "Epic 2014," wherein the future media landscape is dominated by a single company: Googlezon.
At the moment, the United States sets the rules for the Internet, through the non-governmental Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Whether the U.S. will retain its hegemony, however, is uncertain; it's up for debate next month at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. Kenneth Neil Cukier outlined the debate for Foreign Affairs, and joins Brooke to discuss what's at stake.
Jim Romenesko may be the most powerful name in the media that you've never heard of. Although his website bears his name, Romenesko has made his name quietly assembling an indispensable collection of every reportorial transgression, every format change, every buy-out, every compelling or questionable or errant media moment - all of them boldfaced and linked to. Jim joins Brooke to explain how he cooks up his delicious dish for a hungry audience of media obsessives.
