Revisiting Consumed by Technology

A recent visit to the Internet Archive unearthed a cache of text and audio related to a summer series I presented in 1996 on CBC Prince Edward Island’s Island Morning that we called Consumed by Technology.

The episodes were part of a website hosted by erstwhile Internet service provider Island Services Network, the first toe in the waters of the Internet by CBC on the Island. This meant that, by virtue of having constructed the CBC’s site in the first place, I had uncommon freedom to post and document the Consumed by Technology series in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to previously or later: I linked to each episode’s RealAudio file, provided a list of links (what we’ve come to call, in the podcasting world, “show notes”), and the transcript of the episode (the text I provided to the hosts).

Like A User’s Guide to the Future that I presented the summer before on Island Morning, Consumed by Technology provides a small window into the beginnings of the digital age on Prince Edward Island; what’s remarkable to me is that the issues I chose to highlight back then, more than 20 years ago, are still the issues I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about today.

Like the previous summer’s series, Consumed by Technology was produced by Ann Thurlow for the CBC.

Here are the seven episodes, in order of broadcast:

1. Four inches of metal strapping for 37 cents
2. Sale on words… 50 cents a pound
3. The Death of Time
4. What have they got on me?
5. Thirty year olds who buy diapers and tractors twice-weekly
6. Bugs, glitches and other disasters
7. Of bombs and porn and the ‘net