I’ve been a bit silent on the Auricle front lately but I normally try and take a long break from normal life around Christmas and New Year. Anyway, to kick off my first contribution of the New Year let’s consider what Shop Talk has to offer the grey matter. Buried away in the many BBC radio offerings is an obscure programme which is normally transmitted in the deadly 4pm slot and doesn’t appear to be repeated. So with that burden, and a programme title more likely to act as a turn off, I guess many people miss it. It’s called Shop Talk and it’s a real gold mine of cotemporary thinking which describes its aim as:
“Intelligent and entertaining conversation about business, money, technology and workplace issues.”
Shop Talk offers some some excellent programmes and, unlike some BBC sites, this one seems to keep a pretty good archive. For instance, this week’s transmission is on Web 2.0 with an excellent contribution from my former UKOLN colleague, Paul Miller (now defined as a technology evangelist 🙂
Previous programmes have considered Internet Search Engines, Newspapers and the Internet, Computer Games, Nanotechnology, Blogging, Voice Recognition, Disruptive Innovation, Pro-ams (the impact of amateurs), Libraries, The Future of the PC, Artificial Intelligence, and Wi-Fi.
I sometimes despair about BBC’s lack of recognition of its own gems. Along with the excellent Material World (which at least benefits from joint Open University collaboration) Shop Talk deserves a much higher profile than it’s been getting. It would be good to see it offered as a podcast download.
So if you are interested in technology and education and therefore, by implication, technology and society, then Shop Talk is for you. Highly recommended.
