No corner of modern American life is untouched by technology. And no technology is more transformative than the Internet. This for the simple reason that the Internet is, at bottom, a communications network and communication is the foundation of society, business and government. When you scale up communications, you change the world. The consultants and evangelists are doing a good job making the case that social technologies (blogs, wikis, Social Networks, Twitter etc.) are a positive force for society and business. The critiques, however, often feel small (Is Google Making Us Stupid, Facebook Addiction etc.) in the face of the tectonic shifts being brought about by social technologies. This webcast is a discussion of the deeper uncertainties surrounding society's great, headlong rush into the Social Web, such as:

• How will social technologies affect privacy?

• What is the potential for these tools to get used/abused by government and corporations?

• What are the implications for society in a totally networked world?

• The Question Concerning Social Technology

• Captivity of the Commons

• The Digital Panopticon

• Social Science Moves From Academia to the Corporation

This webcast is based on a four-part article series published on the O'Reilly Radar in May, 2009:

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