Welcome to the fourth episode of ‘Hollingville’. My studio guest is music and technology writer Becky Hogge, former executive director of the Open Rights Group. Expect unscripted ruminations on social networking and online politics, high weirdness and paranoia, ARPANET and the Cold War, CNN and Desert Storm, DRM and balls of wool. Specially commissioned musical interludes are by Richard H Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire, with additional moods by the ‘Hollingsville’ composer in residence, Graham Massey, plus ins and outs by Indigo Octagon.
Networks have extended the range of our senses but also compromised them. As weapons systems, commercial enterprise, banking and home entertainment draw increasingly upon the same operating platforms, the neutrality of the network is open to question. Perhaps the most appropriate model for understanding the enduring nature of the network is the Labyrinth: a structure of mystifying complexity where technology, deception and violence all meet. Enter your password now.
After visiting Mars, where next? Welcome to Hollingsville: the new twelve-part series from writer Ken Hollings. A World’s Fair of the airwaves, the shows focuses each week on a different aspect of our historical relationship with technology. From machines to monsters, spaces to dreams, this Radio Expo offers an unscripted tour through the chosen theme, utilising voices and sounds from special guests and presented by Ken Hollings with his usual idiosyncratic flair.
Ken Hollings is the author of Welcome To Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947-1959, available from Strange Attractor Press. For more information go to http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk or http://www.kenhollings.blogspot.com
