From its inception, our media has offered both promise and peril. In this encore presentation, Peter joins two previously separate interviews on this common theme:
– In the first half, Penn communications professor Victor Pickard illuminates a period in our media history—radio of the 1940s—when the FCC asserted itself for the sake of more democratic airwaves. The take-away is a lesson or two that might serve the cause of media democracy today.
– In the second half, Peter is joined by Arlingtonian Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age. Concerned by technology’s growing reach into every corner of our lives—into the very ways we process thought and its potential disruption of our creative capacities—Birkerts sounds a cautionary note of utility to everyone within reach of a smartphone, computer or GPS.
