Tag Archives: digital

The Curse Of The Smartphone: T/F?

In today’s globalized world which operates 24/7, it is hard to imagine life without the ubiquitous smartphone.  But it wasn’t always so.  The first iPhone was introduced in 2007, so even though there are 6 billion cell phone users today, millions of people were raised without cellphones or indeed any phone at all!  This possibility is, of course, inconceivable to a Generation Z-er.

There are undeniable benefits to owning a smart phone – navigating, contacting loved ones, organizing business, taking photos and recording music.  A myriad of convenient functions all contained within one small digital rectangle!  The smartphone did change the 20th Century, but it came at a cost.  It brought with it, unique and perhaps unintended consequences into every sphere of our lives. 

What negative effects is this dependency having on our behavior? What can we do about it?  

Paul Greenberg quit his iPhone three years ago to research Goodbye Phone, Hello World after he realized that he had wasted one whole year of his life on the phone that could have been spent with his teenage son.

Do you love or hate your phone? Could you live without it?  

Recorded 2/22/20222

Curse Of The Smartphone 1
Curse Of The Smartphone 2

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ROTTEN REPORTAGE – Do We Have the Media We Deserve?

The bulk of mainstream media in the U.S. is now owned by a handful of corporations that continue to gobble up smaller outlets and independent presses. Some say that we have created a perfect echo chamber and that the plurality of a free press is just a sad joke. Turning on the TV or scrolling through the headlines offers only the illusion of choice.

So is the media monopoly almost complete? Is there any cause for optimism in the new journalistic market place?   In its pre-election coverage, does the national press corps reveal its true colors?

Cambridge Forum invited a panel of journalists and experts drawn from the Internet, academia, and NPR to discuss the state of journalism in America today.

  WGBH Forum videocast

Listen to Rotten Reportage – Part 1 recorded 3/09/2016

[audio:https://www.cambridgeforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/CAMFORUM-ROTTEN-1.mp3|titles=Cambridge Forum Rotten Reportage – Part 1]

lonnieOur speakers include Lonnie Isabel.  Isabel teaches at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Isabel spent 25 years in the newspaper business, covering or directing the coverage of several presidential campaigns including the fabled 2000 election. He also ran the coverage of Hillary Clinton’s run for Senate, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and just about every major national and international story of his generation. He has covered each national political convention since 1984.
Isabel has worked for Newsday, the Boston Globe, Boston Herald and Oakland Tribune. After leaving Newsday as deputy managing editor in 2005, Isabel joined the newly-created CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where he started the International Reporting Program that has trained more than 75 journalists to cover international issues, and the International Journalist-in-Residence program that brings an endangered, targeted or threatened journalist each year to study and work at the school. He started at Columbia last year.  He is co-author of a book to be released this summer, “Think/Point/Shoot: Media Ethics, Technology and Global Change”.

Peter S. Goodman is the Global Editor-In-Chief of the International Business Times, where he supervises more than 200 journalists across worldwide editions. goodman1He was previously Executive Business and Global News Editor for the Huffington Post, where he oversaw business, technology and international reporting while writing a column that earned a Loeb award for commentary. Goodman was the National Economic Correspondent for the New York Times during the Great Recession. There, he played a central role in “The Reckoning,” a series of stories on the roots of the 2008 financial crisis, which won a Loeb and was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize.  Goodman is the author of Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy.

Sam Fleming is Director of News and Programming at WBUR. He’s responsible for supervising a staff of 75, including news managers, producers, reporters, writers, editors, hosts and production staff.   flemming1Under his direction, WBUR’s News Department has garnered more than 50 national and local awards recognizing the quality and depth of its news coverage. Fleming first worked at the station in 1981 as a general assignment reporter. In 1992, he became WBUR’s News Director, a position he held until 2004. In that role he oversaw the breadth, depth and daily workings of the news produced at WBUR and helped to manage the content of daily broadcasts in their diverse forms.

Reclaiming Conversation

CF: Reclaiming Conversation

turkle2Most conversations today involve distracted people looking at their phones and not their partners. This, according to Sherry Turkle, is leading to a “crisis of empathy” at work, at home and in our public life. Turkle is Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, and spent four decades studying the relationship between people and technology. Her current research indicates that the decline in thoughtful face-to-face dialogue constitutes an epidemic and that in moving from “conversation to mere connection”, we are losing our humanity.

Recorded 2/3/16 

Sherry Turkle is Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self.

Her newest book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (Penguin Press, October 2015), is a call to action. “It is not an anti-technology book but a pro-conversation book!” according to Turkle, which illustrates how fleeing from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity.

Listen to Reclaiming Conversation featuring Sherry Turkle recorded at Cambridge Forum 2/03/2016:

CF: Reclaiming Conversation