When was the last time you sat down and wrote a letter? Writer Christina Crook took an internet sabbatical for a month and started writing letters to a friend, who in turn posted them on a blog called Letters from a Luddite. Similarly, author Mary Robinette Kowal spent a month without the internet, corresponding only by paper letter. Now she’s issued a challenge on her blog called A Month of Letters. The challenge is, for the month of February, to mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. And write back to everyone who writes to you. (Runs 6:41)

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• Letters From a Luddite
• The Month of Letters Challenge
• Mary Robinette Kowal
• You might like this Spark story about love letters

Imagine a city with buildings, roads and offices, but no residents. Robert Brumley and his company Pegasus Global Holdings, are creating the Center for Innovation Testing and Evaluation. Which is basically a full functioning city designed for just that –testing and evaluation-… just minus the people. (Runs 8:37)

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• Robert Brumley
• Press release for the Center for Innovation Testing and Evaluation

It used to be that urban life and rural life were two solitudes. But technology has changed the culture of small towns. Spark contributor Denis Grignon spends some time with classic urbanites-come-ruralites-because-of technology and the reluctant-established-ruralites-struggling to live with them. (Runs 6:59)

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• Denis Grignon

What do computers, knitting, and 18th century China have in common? For mathematician and technology historian, Kristen Haring, the answer is binary systems. Haring is researching the cultural history of binary, and she wants to show us that we know more about binary than we even realize. It’s everywhere!
And she takes Nora on a fascinating tour. (Runs 25:53)

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• Kristen Haring
• A video of Kristen’s talk How to Knit a Popular History of Media

Get out your history books! We’ll find out why the internet may be ready for its Magna Carta moment. In her new book, Consent of the Networked, Rebecca MacKinnon argues that corporations and governments are like sovereigns in the time before that famous social contract was signed. She says it’s up to us, the networked, to demand consent again to protect the internet as a positive force. (Runs 12:19)

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• Rebecca MacKinnon’s blog
• Consent of The Networked
• Full uncut version of interview with Rebecca MacKinnon
• The Magna Carta

Right now, all over the world, there are elected politicians that were born and raised in the digital age. Their ideas about transparency are a lot different than those of the previous generation, and Spark contributor Cyrus Farivar tells us why some think this will be a good thing, ushering in a new era where public figures no longer live separate, private lives. (Runs 10:07)

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• Cyrus Farivar
• Kristal Ball’s Huffington Post blog
• Marietje Schaake

When this year’s Sundance Festival wrapped up recently, a lot of the buzz was around a little Canadian documentary called Indie Game: The Movie. One of the guys that inspired the filmmakers is Alec Holowka, an independent video game designer in Winnpeg with big ideas about the personal connection between game and designer he believes is at the heart of independent video games. (Runs 8:26)

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• Alec Holowka
• Alec’s game Aquaria
• Indie Game: The movie
• You might be interested in this Spark 126 – Games, Games, Games!

The Japanese government has launched a site called Mazer, as part of its “Cool Japan” project. The idea is for people to post questions or problems, and crowdsource the answers. The winning ideas will be bid on by businesses to make them a reality. Michael Keferl is a marketer and trendspotter in Tokyo and we get his take. We expand the conversation for a look at how and when crowdsourcing can be effective, with digital culture writer, Don Tapscott. (Runs 15:47)

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• Michael Keferl
• Mazer
• Cool Japan
• Don Tapscott
• Full uncut version of interview with Don Tapscott
• Don’s CBC Radio series ReCivilization

Author and journalist Cory Doctorow believes US anti-piracy legislation like the recently shelved SOPA and PIPA are just the beginning in a long war against all computing. He calls this idea “The Coming War on General Purpose Computation” and has a a lot to say about control over how people use their computers. (Runs 11:38)

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• Cory Doctorow
• Cory on The Coming War on General Purpose Computation
• Full uncut version of interview with Cory Doctorow

In the wake of the SOPA protests, we talk to Byron Holland, president and CEO of CIRA, (the Canadian Internet Registration Authority), about protecting Canadians’ online access in a global Internet context, and balancing copyright protection with an open Internet. (Runs 10:26)

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• Byron Holland
• Canadian Internet Registration Authority

We begin with AnnaLee Saxenian, Dean of the School of Information at the University of California and author of The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy. She talks about what happened in Silicon Valley to make it the world’s centre of tech innovation, and how the future of growth and innovation will depend on the new Argonauts, experts who move information fluidly between creative hubs all over the world. (Runs 7:05)
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• AnnaLee Saxenian
• The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy

Spark contributor Jonathan Gifford brings us the story of creative convergence in Berlin, Germany – a place that people have had their eye on for the past while as being “the next Silicon Valley”. (Runs 7:27)

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Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation who has a long history in working to build open, collaborative, creative environments, talks about using the open principles of the web to create truly creative tech communities. (Runs 11:08)
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• Mark Surman
• Mozilla Foundation
• Full uncut version of interview with Mark Surman

The switch from writing on typewriters to using word processors made editing more efficient. But how did the technology change the creative process? Nora speaks to Matthew Kirschenbaum about his upcoming book Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing. We also hear from author Susan Swan, about her own experience of moving from the typewriter to the word processor. But we start with early word processing memories of the broader Spark community. (Runs 14:26)

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• Matthew Kirschenbaum
• Susan Swan

Can’t find that street that shows up on your car’s GPS? It could be an honest mistake, or it could be the digital equivalent of an old cartography trick – intentional fake streets, towns, and parks that mapmakers intentionally put in to protect their work. Called ‘trap streets’ or ‘copyright easter eggs’ the practice has taken a whole new direction in the digital age, with some strange possible outcomes and Spark contributor Edward Birnbaum tells us all about it. (Runs 5:37)

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Is it time to give the traditional university or college lecture a radical reboot? Nora speaks with Gerry McCartney about Purdue University’s Hotseat technology that lets students ask questions and make comments online in the middle of lectures. Welcome interactivity or unwelcome distraction? (Runs 5:43)

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• Gerry McCartney
• Hotseat

Many schools are experimenting with new digital tools in the classroom, from cellphones, to apps, to tablets. Rhonda McEwen, a University of Toronto academic who researches the impact of new media, has been researching the benefits of using iPads with non-verbal, autistic students. (Runs 8:53)

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• Rhonda McEwen
• The My Voice app Rhonda talked about
• Full uncut version of interview with Rhonda McEwen

Throughout history, technological change has caused job loss, but there have always been new jobs that have opened up. In his new book Race Against The Machine, MIT researcher Andrew McAfee argues that digital technology is advancing so quickly, it’s outstripping our ability to adapt economically. (Runs 10:40)

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• Andrew McAfee
• Race Against The Machine
• Full uncut version of interview with Andrew McAfee

This week the biggest buzz in tech is in Las Vegas at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. It’s the place to see the latest in electronic products – some ready for market, and others still light years away. Spark contributor Peter Nowak has been there all week, and has a debrief on the exciting new alternatives to traditional computer interfaces on display. (Runs 6:44)

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• Peter Nowak
• CES 2012
• Eye Tracking by Tobii technology

Paul La Farge is the author of Luminous Airplanes, a hypertext novel. It unfurls a branching, non-linear story based on the links you click. The genre was all the rage in the 90s, but quickly puttered out. Now that we’re in the age of Kindles, microblogging, and iPads, are there any bold experiments in literature? Why are we satisfied with porting the same old-fashioned novel format to futuristic gadgets that are capable of (almost) anything? Nora speaks with Paul about why literature seems stuck in neutral. (Runs 10:50)

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• Paul La Farge
• Read an excerpt from Luminous Airplanes here on the Spark blog

On Spark, we always like a good talk about monitoring and tracking. From your web browsing fingerprint to facial recognition and retina scans…it can get kinda creepy. Now there’s another way computers may be able to identify you in the real world – your gait. Nora Young speaks with Todd Pataky, a researcher who is teaching computers to identify individuals by the way they walk. Yup. (Runs 4:34)

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• Todd Pataky
• Related Spark stories you may like, like this one on facial recognition or this one about how your web browsing is being tracked right now.

Working from home -telecommuting- is a dream scenario for many people, and advances in technology have helped that dream become more realized. Nora speaks with Ian Cook, director of research and learning at British Columbia’s Human Resources Management Association about what’s fueling the trend towards telecommuting, and then she speaks with Shawn D. Long, a communications studies scholar at the University of North Carolina, about how telecommuting can end up leaving people isolated from office politics, gossip and camaraderie. (Runs 15:28)

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• Ian Cook
• Full uncut version of interview with Ian Cook
• Shawn D. Long
• Related Spark stories you may like, like this one on workplace relationship intelligence or this one on why work doesn’t happen at work

So here we are in the age of life-logging, with more and more people recording every bit of information daily. This behavior is also called total capture and Facebook’s latest Timeline feature has introduced the idea of total capture to mainstream audiences. A Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Abigail Sellen is critical of the modern conversation on life-logging and total capture and argues this technical handling of memories through indexing and metadata is just not how memory works. (Runs 10:04)

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• Abigail Sellen
• Full uncut version of interview with Abigail Sellen
• Abigail Sellen and Steve Whittaker: Beyond total capture: A constructive critique of lifelogging
• Microsoft Research Theme: The future of looking back
• Facebook Timeline

Nora talks to Luciano Floridi, a philosopher of information who argues that we are entering a “Fourth Revolution”. Just as the Copernican, Darwinian, and Freudian revolutions changed how we see ourselves, the Information Revolution ushers in a view of ourselves as ‘nodes on a network’ instead of isolated individuals. (Runs 23:30)

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• Luciano Floridi
• What is the Philosophy of Information?
• Information: A Very Short Introduction

Nora also talks to author David Weinberger about his new book Too Big To Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That Facts Aren’t Fact, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room, which looks at the way the Internet is changing how information is organized, and what this change means for how we gain knowledge and make decisions. (Runs 26:11)

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• David Weinberger
• Too Big To Know
• The Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory

Baratunde Thurston is a comedian and author, as well as the web and politics editor for The Onion. His first book How to be Black will come out at the end of January, and he has an interesting approach to marketing it. He has amassed an advance street team of volunteers – volunteers he vetted for their social media influence, and has now sent forth to campaign for him and his book. (Runs 14:08)

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• Baratunde Thurston
• How To Be Black
• Full uncut version of interview with Baratunde Thurston

These days, it’s not enough to simply watch a TV show. You’re asked to follow the show on Facebook and Twitter, download the companion app for your smartphone, and buy tickets to the touring stage show when it visits your town. These techniques are sometimes called “transmedia” and Steve Rubel, the executive vice president of Global Strategy and Insights for the PR company Edelman, talks about how to manage time and attention in a transmedia world. (Runs 7:08)

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• Steve Rubel
• Full uncut version of interview with Steve Rubel

Jon Kalish brings us the latest DIY trend: hackerspaces popping up at public libraries across North America. He’ll tell us why the re-purposing of public libraries is revolutionizing the way we think about libraries, turning them into places where we can make things. (Runs 8:13)

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• Jon Kalish
• The Tekventure Maker Station
• Fayetteville Free Library Fab Lab
• Meg Backus’ blog Public Praxis: Interventionist Librarianship

According to David Weinberger, libraries have access to huge amounts of information that they’re simply not making use of. David is the co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and two projects he’s working on, ShelfLife and LibraryCloud, are designed to change the way we find and access library information. (Runs 8:46)

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• The Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory
• David’s blog
• Full uncut version of interview with David Weinberger

Cathi Bond is here to talk about the trend of niche publications – having a subscription that’s not to a magazine, but to actual physical objects that come in the mail. It’s a different, analog approach to customization. Hyper-curated almost. And Cathi and Nora wonder if it’s an example of a post-digital fetishization of artifacts. (Runs 7:08)

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• Cathi Bond
• 8 Faces
• The Thing Quarterly

In our metrics-obsessed world, you’d think we’d be pretty good at collecting and analyzing data. But Tony Haile, the CEO of Chartbeat, thinks we are still way off. Nora talks to him about why he thinks we need to stop looking to the past to predict future outcomes and instead learn to respond in real time. The best way to do that according to Tony, is to put the data in the hands of the front line workers…to “hack the factory” using the ideas of a Japanese visionary over 60 years ago. (Runs 11:41)

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• Tony Haile
• Tony’s talk at the Mashable Media Summit 2011
• Taiichi Ohno
• Toyota Production System Principles

The “base of the pyramid” is a term used in marketing and design to talk about creating products to serve the needs of people with the lowest incomes. One Canadian company is trying to bring the world’s cheapest tablet computer to developing economies. But for all the possibilities, how can ‘base of the pyramid’ design avoid just being an opportunity to dump cheap products on emerging markets? Spark producer Anshuman Iddamsetty talks about the challenges of marketing tech in emerging economies, with the expertise of design researcher Anjali Kelkar and Suneet Tuli, the Canadian head of Datawind. (Runs 10:20)

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• The Aakash Tablet
• Studio for Design Research

Spark takes a look at science through the lens of the internet. Nora interviews Michael Nielsen, author of Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science to explore how collaborative tools like wikis, blogs, and online databases could re-shape how we make scientific discoveries. We also hear from Seth Cooper, co-founder and lead developer of an online science puzzle game called Foldit (fun with protein structures!) and Anthony Philbin about his Montreal-based startup meTracker, which aims to make personal experimentation and self-tracking easier, and could have practical applications in fields such as medicine. (Runs 25:16)

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• Michael Nielsen
• Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science
• Foldit
• meTracker
• phylo