11 Responses to “The Medium Isn’t the Only Message Here.”

1. theananda Says:
   June 2nd, 2005 at 1:02 am

   I would love to hear about law – ideas like the universal declaration of human rights v. national sovereignty. How do we decide what is simply unacceptable as opposed to what is merely cultural? And, if you like, how has the Internet affected our sense of laws, human rights and actual events in real peoples’ lives?

2. Lisa Williams Says:
   June 2nd, 2005 at 1:39 am

   Super minor league baseball. Opening night for the North Shore Spirit is tomorrow at Fraser Field in Lynn. Best entertainment for $4 for bleacher seats I ever had. Bill Lee — the Spaceman — recently wrote a book called Trying to Save an Old Ballpark which is about trying to bring this kind of ball — below even farm leagues — to upstate New York.

   Worcester has a new team coached by ex Sox Rich Gedman. A few weeks ago there was an *open tryout* where anybody who showed up could try out. Anybody. Bill Murray (yes, that Bill Murray the actor) owns a piece of the Brockton Rox, and grew up in Brockton. All these teams belong to the Can Am League, but there are plenty of semipro leagues that are just packed with interesting stories and people and talkers.

   I’m thinking of going to the game tomorrow. Maybe I’ll record some stuff and send it to you.

3. Jackson Says:
   June 2nd, 2005 at 8:15 am

   How about “unintended consequences”? The internet offers a thousand — nay, verily a million — examples of how postings go awry. Nifty MIDI files turned to crap by nasty software synths, Atrios and his fabled “Torture Lou” motif, where the blogger urges his readers to drive a meaningless online poll toward an entirely unexpected outcome.

4. natep Says:
   June 2nd, 2005 at 9:51 am

   In response to theananda’s suggestion, if you want to talk about this, you should contact one of the members of my dissertation committee, Prof. Beth Simmons. She is a political scientist at Harvard who specializes in international law, particularly on international human rights law (who follows it, why they follow it, and so forth).

5. David Says:
   June 2nd, 2005 at 11:45 am

   Lisa: yes, record some sound. Talk to the mascot, the bat boy, the old woman with the scorecard and the play-by-play in her headphones who doesn’t miss a game. But. most of all, think about talkers. To put a show on we need not only an interesting topic and, ideally, a little bit of interesting audio, but most of all a great talker, someone who can make the topic come alive. Jeff Sharlet did it last night, to my ear. Give us a great talker and we’ll give you a show.

6. avecfrites Says:
   June 2nd, 2005 at 3:55 pm

   That’s it: the show is “open source”, not “open mike”. Use the Internet (real-time email, instant messaging, comments posted to a web form, SMS messages, etc.) as ways for people to interact with you during the show, and to discussions after the show, but don’t make the show ABOUT the technology.

   The whole point of having a Christopher Lydon is to get a better product (radio show) than untrained people could create. Chris brings deep knowledge about human topics, deep experience with interviewing, a deep sense of how to encapsulate an issue for us to understand, etc.

   The conceptual problem with the Internet focus is that while the people most likely to “get it” are those who work with technology for a living, the last thing most of us want is further isolation in our specialties. We want Chris to bring us the wider world.

   I’m into jazz now almost completely because of Chris’ “The Connection” shows on the topic in the ’90′s. I appreciate Boston’s history and architecture more because of Chris’ time spent exposing us all to them. I want shows on global culture, cooking, jazz, art, pandemics, nuclear proliferation, adoption, writing, work/life balance, community activism, mid-life crisis, the changing definition of family, the unchanging nature of man, etc.

   An analogy from the real-world: in the past decade, the companies who gained the most from technology are those who use it most effectively (Wal-Mart, e.g.), not those who create and wallow in it.

   Open Source | Open Eyes | Open Mind | Open Up

7. Naomi Says:
   June 2nd, 2005 at 4:14 pm

   I agree with others above about balancing the tech topics with human topics. I personally would love to hear a show about childbirth. Look at the cultural forces behind the alarming increase in Caesarian births, including elective C-sections. Talk to the Cambridge Midwives. Ask mothers (non-expert experts) about their birth experiences and how they do or don’t affect their relationships with their babies, partners, the wider world.

   We all start out at birth; why is our culture so allergic to it?

8. mattwalton Says:
   June 2nd, 2005 at 6:00 pm

   I’d love to hear a show about American religious opposition to the teaching of Evolution in schools – but only if at least 50% of your panelists were against such teaching. I would especially love to hear from a Creationist Scientist, or best facsimile. I would trust Open Source to search diligently for the most authoritative and articulate such person — because we intellectuals need to hear their side, if we truly value dispassionate inquiry. Do we really understand well enough how it is that we KNOW things?

9. Jackson Says:
   June 2nd, 2005 at 10:49 pm

   Why stop at evolution? Boston is, of course, the home of the Christian Scientists, who have intriguing ideas about the treatment of all ills. SO, for example, where do the snowflake embryos and rationalized stem cell lines fit in this scheme?

10. Naomi Says:
    June 5th, 2005 at 11:49 am

    Great suggestions, Mattwalton & Jackson! I’d love to hear that debate. Real debate, not Crossfire-style platitudes and screaming.

11. anne Says:
    June 5th, 2005 at 6:07 pm

    I’d really like to hear more about stem cell research about the science but also about the money. Do I donate an egg the way I donate a kidney? What in the process is proprietary? Who is making money? And what is it worth to extend our lives by 5 years(?) in the 21′st century when we haven’t even got antibiotics (1940s technology) to the 3′rd world? My uncle, a Jesuit priest in India, says the greatest medical discovery of the 20th century was rehydration drinks (gatorade) because it allowed so many infants afficted with diarrhea to live to their 1′st birthday.

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