The government's perceived right to control information and protect private data networks has become entangled in a tragedy. Aaron Swartz — 26-year-old programming genius and, in a sense, a budding philosopher of the information age — took his own life on Friday. Lawrence Lessig, a friend and mentor, remembers him.

"When technological devices demand our attention and we feel we are missing something if we don’t constantly check for updates, then we use our time and our senses in different ways," writes Fred Plotkin.

We all claim to want privacy online, but that desire is rarely reflected in our online behavior. OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman looks into the futile attempts we make to protect our digital identities.

Johannes Brahms - Violin Concerto op.77 in D Major

During this week's interview with the author of The Parent App, two callers shared stories of their sons' internet addictions. Joining us now to discuss internet addiction is Howard Markel, professor of psychiatry, public health, history and pediatrics at the University of Michigan and the author of An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine.

16-year-old Temitayo Fagbenle is troubled by the fact that her Facebook newsfeed is inundated with sexually explicit photos and videos of other teenage girls that are posted, commented on, and shared countless times by her peers. Teenagers targeting and shaming each other isn’t new but in the past the messages written on bathroom stalls only scarred a girl’s reputation during high school. Kids today are rightly taught that what goes on the internet stays on the internet and can pop up at any time. Temitayo brings listeners inside the cyber world of teenagers to explore how using the internet as a tool to ruin a reputation has repercussions far beyond the schoolyard.

In November, Radio Rookies took part in the Mozilla Festival -- in London! The festival is all about teaching everyone to be a webmaker. Presenters come to show off their own hard work but are also there to teach young people and educators their skills.  People have the chance to actually use the tools they learn to make things there at Moz Fest. 

The scheduled rollout of Wi-Fi and cell phone service in 30 more New York subway stations will have to wait until next year.

View  a map of which stations are wi-fi ready.

The United States once led the world in internet speed and infrastructure. Now, according to one estimate, it ranks at about 29. Brooke talks to David Cay Johnston, journalist and author of The Fine Print: How big companies use plain english to rob you blind, who says that companies continue to raise prices and engage in lobbying efforts to rewrite regulation, while avoiding necessary upgrades to infrastructure that would speed up America's internet.

Menahan Street Band - The Crossing

Stephen Duncombe, associate professor at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, talks about his project to create a web-based, open source edition of Sir Thomas More's Utopia.

From Apple's iCloud to Dropbox, cloud computing is becoming an increasingly important and useful part of digital life. This week's Please Explain is about the physical structures that make cloud computing possible, and their hidden impact on the environment. We're joined by James Glanz from The New York Times, who spent a year investigating the physical structures that make up and support cloud computing, and Dennis Symanski, Senior Project Manager at the Electric Power Research Institute.

Steven Johnson makes the case that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from local governments to classrooms, from protest movements to health care. In Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age shows how politics are influenced by the interconnectedness of the Internet and breaks with the conventional categories of liberal or conservative thinking.

NY1 political reporter Josh Robin delves into his series,“Tangled Web,” which looks at how orthodox Jews are dealing with the internet.

James Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, offers advice on how to address some of the pitfalls of kids’ use of media and technology: relationship issues, attention/addiction problems, and the lack of privacy. His book Talking Back to Facebook is a guide to raising kids in the digital age that gives parents essential tools to help filter content and make good judgments.

Robert Atkinson, Director of Policy Research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at the Columbia Business School, explains why some New York City neighborhoods have better Internet service than others.

It's still common to see piles of phone books delivered to apartment buildings around the city. But many of these yellow pages lay neglected outside front doors as people use the internet far more frequently to find phone numbers.

Florence Detlor is now 101 years old, and considering how much technology she’s seen come and go in her lifetime, we’d forgive her if she chose to opt out of things like email and social networking sites. But Florence, like many people over 65, embraces computer technology. Why is that?