Lounge Ruminator

Television sets have long determined not only where our furniture goes, but also how we interact with others at home. Are things now changing in this physical space to reflect our own individual use of smaller, mobile screens?

Turn on your TV to watch a sporting match in Australia and you’re sure to see advertisements for various betting apps and services. Of particular concern is how these advertisements can affect and are understood by children. To learn more, I invited Dr. Hannah Pitt (Postdoctoral Research Fellow in public health at Deakin University) to discuss her continuing research into this issue.

Every year, on a particular day in June, I get up at 3:00 am in Australia to watch Apple’s WWDC keynote address. This year’s was really impressive and in this episode, I summarise the most exciting updates. There is, however one part of this story—almost too quickly forgotten—that needs to be addressed and I tell a personal story about security to make sense of it.

This week, I reflect briefly on the history of radio, discuss the need for more international content in TV streaming and share the story of a bizarre photo album that went from digital to print.

Niche communities, identities and communication channels—they are a sign of the great diversity of interests, views and cultural groups in our society… but they can also be a sign of fragmentation. In a world that’s brimming with super-specific feeds, tailored content and targeted advertising, could some mass media actually offer a better way of engaging with major global issues and movements, such as #BlackLivesMatter? I (a white person) try to consider and discuss this respectfully.

These days, most people take their devices for granted. As an antidote to this, I speak with fellow Microblogger and tech hobbyist, Andrew Canion. We share our early memories of computing, our current preferences, touch-typing origin stories and how we both ended up choosing the Mac as the hub of our digital lives. Last, we discuss where we’d like technology to go in the future.

This week, I discuss the true purpose of technology education, according to Postman—somehow weaving my favourite sci-fi series into it—then conclude by ruminating on what it means to be still.

I explain my early research into the world of niche tech podcasting and discuss an uncontrollable urge that many people experience: the desire to buy more books than can ever actually be read.

This week, in honour of the late, great Jerry Stiller (aka Frank Costanza in Seinfeld), Natasha and I discuss the best TV show in history, how it brought us together and some of Stiller’s most memorable moments as Costanza.

Now that restrictions on visiting others have been relaxed a bit in New South Wales, Pete joined me on the rumination lounge to discuss the power that music has to transport us to different times and places.