Technology

E-books are rapidly gaining market share, and publishing companies are going through changes that parallel the music business. New Yorker writer Ken Auletta explains how the transition from paper to screen is changing the way we choose, buy and read books — and what the changes mean for publishers and authors.

Richard Clarke, the former anti-terrorism czar, has now turned his attention to a new national security threat: cyberwar. In a new book, Clarke details what a full-scale cyberattack could look like, how the United States is particularly vulnerable, and what measures can be taken to ensure our networks remain safe.

You might define the films of James Cameron by listing two characteristics: state-of-the-art special effects and huge box-office receipts. For starters,Titanic, The Terminator and Aliens all qualify on both counts. Now he adds Avatar to the list. He joins Fresh Air to discuss his complex special effects and innovative filming techniques.

The cyber attack at Google's Chinese headquarters in December highlighted vulnerabilities in US network security. James Lewis, author of Securing Cyberspace in the 44th Presidency explains why terrorists see the Internet as the next frontier and how the Obama administration is responding.

Media critic Ken Auletta tracks the development of Google from a search engine to the provider of all things Internet in his new book Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.

Critic-at-large John Powers discusses two new works — one a documentary, another a novel, that blur the lines between public and private lives.

Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine, talks about his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Anderson theorizes that businesses can profit by giving it all away on the internet.

Transportation expert Daniel Sperling estimates that the world's car population — which currently stands at 1 billion vehicles — is likely to double in the next 20 years. Sperling is the co-author (with Deborah Gordon) of Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability.

John Yemma, editor of The Christian Science Monitor, discusses the paper's new publication model: It's moving the daily operation to the Web and converting its print paper to a weekly.

Sixty-eight percent of all web searches take place on Google.com. But as journalist Randall Stross found when researching his new book, Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know, the company's business extends well beyond basic web searches.

Many people generate an immense amounts of digital data during a single day — often without a second thought. But Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek, warns that the information generated is being monitored by a group of entrepreneurial mathematicians.

Digital media — including MP3 players, peer-to-peer networks and music websites — are changing how we discover, listen to and share music. Wired.com journalist Eliot Van Buskirk joins Fresh Air to discuss the new, digital landscape of music, and the resulting changes in the music industry.

Counterterrorism expert served for 30 years, under several presidents; he joins Dave Davies to discuss what he describes as a culture of mediocrity in U.S. national-security programs.

Jimmy Wales helped create Wikipedia, the interactive online encyclopedia founded in 2001. Users write and edit Wikipedia entries themselves; the site also has a dedicated corps of editors. There are often "edit wars" over entries — some, including the one headlined "2006 Lebanon War," have been edited and then re-edited thousands of times — and Wikipedia's accuracy has been questioned by some professors and colleges, who forbid students to cite it as a source. But Wikipedia, with versions in 250 languages, is one of the top 10 sites on the Internet.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the sending of Valentine's messages via telephone, the postal system, and e-mail. What does it say about the evolution of personal communication?

Journalist Julian Dibbell talks about his book Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot. He explores the world of online role-playing games, where hundreds of thousands of players log on to operate fantasy characters in virtual environments. One of the most popular games, World of Warcraft, has six million subscribers.

Recent controversies such as Google's business in China and the U.S. government's role in policing eBay transactions have put a spotlight on the intersection between governments and the Internet. Legal scholars Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu address the issue in their new book, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World.

Critic at large John Powers considers Katamari Damacy, a PlayStation game from Japan.

Six Feet Under, rest in peace. The HBO series, which aired its final episode Sunday, followed the Fisher family and its funeral home business for five seasons. It received two Golden Globe awards and six Emmys. Alan Ball, creator and executive producer, reflects on his show about death.

Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You, aruges that rather than turning our brains to mush, entertainment options like video games are so complex that our brains rise to the challenge.