technology

"If people think about how they might want to create something that isn't just me me me, that could be revolutionary," says musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson. Anderson has crossed genres, created new instruments, performed in "audio drag" and even created some comics, but she's best known for her experimental violin playing. Laurie joins Laura in studio for a feature-length interview on art, electronics, making music for fish, and why Homeland Security still has one of her instruments. "I'd like my title to be 'explorer,' but on my passport it just says 'artist,'" she says.

"We don't write about class struggle in the US so it's hard for us to see it elsewhere," says the Huffington Post's Ryan Grim on the failings of the US media around issues in Egypt. And Katrina vanden Heuvel notes that Islamophobia in the US leads many to focus on fear of the Muslim Brotherhood rather than understanding the ways that Islam and democracy coexist and complement one another. Here in the US, too, there were big media stories, as the Huffington Post merged with AOL, and Keith Olbermann signed up with Al Gore's Current TV. What's in those stories for independent media? Ryan, Katrina and Laura discuss.

"The sources are voting with their leaks," notes Jay Rosen of New York University's school of journalism. If the watchdog press was doing its job, wouldn't leakers be going to mainstream news outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian directly, instead of to WikiLeaks first? Meanwhile, Emily Bell, formerly of the Guardian and now at Columbia University's journalism school, says that whether we like it or not, WikiLeaks is the new face of journalism. Rosen and Bell were part of a symposium this past weekend, hosted by the Personal Democracy Forum, on WikiLeaks and Internet freedom. GRITtv was there as well, and today we bring you excerpts from that event, with journalists, academics, activists, and others talking about the impact of the leaks site on our political and technological systems. Distributed by Tubemogul.

“The question of whether we want a real 'net is really the question of whether we want a real democracy.” That's what Douglas Rushkoff said on Saturday at the Personal Democracy Forum's conference on WikiLeaks. Real democracy comes with messy things we sometimes don't like—and one of those things is getting a boatload of attention. Distributed by Tubemogul.