James Duncan Davidson

Turkle is a professor of the social studies of science and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she has done her own research on these topics and published a book about them last year called “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other” (here she is talking about the book with Stephen Colbert). Her talk clearly resonated at TED, where attendees in the main auditorium aren’t allowed to use their phones or computers, a rare occasion for the many technologists here.

But I don’t think there’s any doubt that after their enthusiastic standing ovation, those twitchy techies were back on their smartphones as soon as the session ended.

What’s so bad about the “I share, therefore I am” mentality, where people live their lives thinking of the pictures they will take and the status messages they will post?

It’s that we’re hiding from each other and real relationships, Turkle said. “We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch. Human relationships are rich and they’re messy and demanding. And we clean them up with technology.”

All this time spent communicating digitally gives us “the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship,” Turkle said. “If we’re not able to be alone, we’re going to be more lonely.”

Turkle asked people to create spaces in their offices and homes that are designated for conversation. She told them to work on solitude and to listen to each other.

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Still, Stewart did spend eight minutes on the story last night. Here he is on Rupert Murdoch’s visit to Parliament. And, of course, Wendi Deng’s pie-deflection.

Which segued to this bit on some News Corp. properties’ … restraint in covering the story.

And for good measure, here’s Colbert’s contribution from last night — a chat with the New York Times’s David Carr, who does most of the heavy lifting.

(Hat tip to All Facebook.)

One new twist to the proceedings: The White House, which normally plays along with the event even though the chief occupant gets ribbed, has gone all in. Immediately after showing this video–a parody trailer based on the “The King’s Speech”–at the event, they released it on YouTube (via Twitter, of course).

The bit isn’t LOL-worthy, IMHO. But it does contain jokes, and I think it’s noteworthy that they’re putting this out there for public consumption, at a time when much of the electorate seems particularly… susceptible to jokes. Even more so if they’re easily accessible via Google.

Also, as The Atlantic.com’s Gabe Snyder points out, the clip contains a Wu Tang Clan sample. Which is sure to upset someone (and please lots of us, too).

(Correction: The song — “Shimmy Shimmy Ya“–is actually from (now-deceased) Wu Tang Clan member Ol’ Dirty Bastard, notes MediaMemo reader “quietstorms“. Even better/worse!)

Meanwhile, you can see all 17 minutes of Obama’s presentation here (much sharper, I think–good Fox News dig), via the Washington Post:

And here’s a TV network taking them up on the offer: Viacom’s Comedy Central, which is counting on Twitter to promote its “Comedy Awards” show tonight.

The network has linked up with the service before. Last month, for instance, it devoted on-screen real estate throughout its Donald Trump roast to hashtag terms it wanted viewers to use as they talked up the show on Twitter. Users who obliged ended up creating free, real-time advertising for the program.

Comedy Central plans to do the same thing with tonight’s show. But it’s taking the integration deeper by buying a “promoted trend” in advance of the broadcast.

Click through and you’ll end up at a page promoting the show, the network’s attempt to create an annual Oscars-style event (which was taped two weeks ago, a fact the network isn’t trying to hide: you can see the winners here). And if you end up on the site while the show is airing tonight, you’ll see a livestream of the telecast, along with a dedicated Twitter widget.

The network is hoping it will be able to get other related terms to trend–for free–as the day goes on; it has recruited about a dozen of the comedians that will appear on the show to actively Twitter about it in advance.

Twitter and Comedy Central were hoping to push the partnership even further by embedding a livestream of tonight’s broadcast on Twitter.com itself, alongside the “#comedyawards” page. But technical issues forced them to scrap the plan Friday morning.

Comedy Central isn’t relying solely on Twitter to push tonight’s show. It will simulcast the show on five other Viacom-owned channels, including Spike and VH1. And for good measure, it will stream the show to Apple’s iPad and iPhone, and handsets running Google’s Android.

But it’s most excited about Twitter, in large part because comedians themselves have flocked to the service in the last couple years. “It just seems like a natural fit”, says Steve Grimes, who oversees digital for the network.

Twitter is quietly excited, too. Even without the embeded video feature, tonight’s show gives it a chance to promote a cycle that would be particularly virtuous for Twitter: TV networks advertise on the service, get higher ratings, and can charge more for their own advertising. Repeat.

Here’s Colbert’s second night of jabs at the Huffington Post and its response to his first night of jabs. Things are now getting so self-referential and Escheresque that it threatens to “”rip a hole in the blog-time continuum, and we can all get sucked into some kind of bizarro parallel huffingverse, where bloggers are paid for their work.”

And, of course, the Huffington Post has responded. Twice!

There’s the obligatory repost of Colbert’s post talking about Huffpo’s first repost of…hoo, boy. You get it.

And, now, in response to “The Colbuffington Re-Post,” which is exactly what it sounds like, there’s “Huffbert Nation.” Which is exactly what it sounds like.

But seriously. We’re done with this. Right? At least until Monday night…

Colbert started out with an entire segment on the Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad newspaper. (Note that this Web site, like the Daily, is owned by News Corp. Though apparently, based on Colbert’s montage, we did not cover the Daily’s launch as enthusiastically as some of our corporate siblings.)

But that was just a warm-up! Colbert really got going when he got around to the AOL-Huffington Post deal, with a drop-dead Arianna impersonation.

Even more accurate: “The Colbuffington Re-Post,” which is exactly what it sounds like.

What’s that? You want more meta? Okay. Here’s HuffPo’s repost of Colbert’s post. And now I’m a little dizzy and will have to sit down for a bit.

That’s according to people familiar with the new deal, announced last night, between the video site and cable giant Viacom. They tell me Hulu has agreed to a guaranteed payment in the $40 million to $50 million range for Viacom’s programming. The total payout could increase depending on the shows’ performance.

That money covers the new deal’s entire length, which hasn’t been disclosed–Viacom will only allow that the deal goes “into” 2012. But it’s reasonable to assume it’s a two-year pact, just like Hulu’s programming deals with its parents/content owners–News Corp.’s Fox, Disney’s ABC and Comcast’s NBCU. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

Stewart’s and Colbert’s shows will be available for free, the day after they air, on Hulu.com– just as they used to be. In addition, Viacom will also provide shows like “Tosh.0″ and “Jersey Shore,” on a 21-day delay, on Hulu’s paid Hulu Plus service.

The deal is a coup for Hulu, but it’s unclear how many more of them CEO Jason Kilar can pull off without getting more financing. And for that he’ll need the full support of his partners, which makes the blog post he put up last night in the wake of the announcement that much more puzzling. Or maybe he doesn’t want to run Hulu anymore.

For now, just like old times, here’s a Hulu clip from one of Stewart’s recent episodes, where he takes advantage of the big, fat, hanging curveball that Rep. Michele Bachmann and the Tea Party served up last week.

It’d be cool if Twitter told us how many times that one actually was retweeted. For those of us who like numbers and stuff.

But whatever. Here’s Colbert’s victory celebration, from last night’s show. Biz Stone dropped by to do the honors.

Oh. Also! Want to buy an ad on Twitter? They’ve got a Web site for you.

It’s a smackdown of chit-chatting ladies, as CBS’s “The Talk” debuted this week, in an attempt to grab audience from the powerhouse daytime ABC talk show “The View.”

It’ll be hard, since those are some tough women on “The View,” which recently was in the spotlight after Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar walked off the set in the middle of a segment with Fox News cable pundit Bill O’Reilly, after he impugned Muslims.

Here is a clip from “The View,” in which O’Reilly comic clone Stephen Colbert pretends to walk off the stage.

It’s followed by an opener for “The Talk”–the best part comes at the end, when Julie Chen’s husband, CBS CEO Les Moonves, offers his support in a welcome video, but also threatens to cancel the show if ratings are not good.

Enjoy:

As in Conan O’Brien, the former NBC employee whose brief stint as host of “The Tonight Show” ended badly, and expensively, for the network. It seems to have worked out okay for O’Brien, though–he got a very big severance check, an infusion of online adoration and, eventually, a well-paid gig at Time Warner’s Turner (TWX).

And while it would be a little, um, awkward if O’Brien actually won the Emmy for best “variety, comedy or music series” (he’s up against Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and “Saturday Night Live”), there is some upside for NBC here. The GE (GE) unit is broadcasting the Emmys in late August, and the potential car-crash nature of the award show might bring in some more eyeballs.

Here is where I’d show you a clip of the award-nominated show, but NBC has scrubbed O’Brien off of its site, Hulu and much of Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. So you’ll have to settle for this bit that O’Brien did specifically for YouTube, where he introduces his favorite viral clips.

As in Conan O’Brien, the former NBC employee whose brief stint as host of “The Tonight Show” ended badly, and expensively, for the network. It seems to have worked out okay for O’Brien, though–he got a very big severance check, an infusion of online adoration and, eventually, a well-paid gig at Time Warner’s Turner (TWX).

And while it would be a little, um, awkward if O’Brien actually won the Emmy for best “variety, comedy or music series” (he’s up against Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and “Saturday Night Live”), there is some upside for NBC here. The GE (GE) unit is broadcasting the Emmys in late August, and the potential car-crash nature of the award show might bring in some more eyeballs.

Here is where I’d show you a clip of the award-nominated show, but NBC has scrubbed O’Brien off of its site, Hulu and much of Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. So you’ll have to settle for this bit that O’Brien did specifically for YouTube, where he introduces his favorite viral clips.

Colbert starts out by talking about the New York Times’ (NYT) ban-that-really-isn’t-a-ban on the word “tweet.” Obligatory red-meat line: “Twitter hasn’t banned the word ‘newspaper,’ and those have already faded into oblivion.”

Then there’s some fail whale stuff, too.

Not much. At least not in the first few weeks of their absence, according to Comscore (SCOR).

Check out Comscore’s tally of the top video sites in the U.S. for February:

And now for March:

Stewart and Colbert left Hulu, the joint venture site owned by GE’s NBC (GE), Disney’s ABC (DIS) and News Corp.’s Fox (NWS), on March 10. But note that Hulu actually streamed about 10 percent more videos that month than it did in February.

Meanwhile streams at Viacom (VIA) sites, now the only places that can host clips like Stewart’s Apple (AAPL) smackdown, increased as well. Perhaps some of that is because Hulu has been good about the breakup, and is directing Daily Show and Colbert Report seekers directly to Viacom’s sites. Which they’re not required to do.

But for whatever reason, it looks like Viacom’s decision to yank the clips — or Hulu’s decision not pay more for them, depending on your interpretation — made sense for both sides.

Some of the requisite caveats: This is just the first sample, and it’s not apples to apples, because February is the shortest month, etc. And overall video traffic appears to have increased around the Web month-to-month. Also, Hulu has been hovering around the billion video per month mark for some time now, so perhaps this its natural level.

(A Hulu aside — how are they possibly getting the $200 million-plus run rate they boasted about earlier this year? Last week I sat down and watched an entire episode of “Lost”, which should be their most premium inventory. The show started off promisingly, with a Verizon sponsorship, but by the end of it I was watching ads for 5-Hour Energy and then what appeared to be some non-profit giveaways. That can’t possibly be right, can it?)

And while we’re looking at the numbers: Note that Vevo, the “Hulu for music videos”, is back in the top 10. And, as always, that Google’s YouTube (GOOG) towers above every other site, by a huge margin.

(Also, Colbert is pretty funny).

In practice, not that much. Particularly in the near term.

The shows are big draws for Hulu, but the site’s audience is growing very fast, and I’ll be surprised if you can detect a notable drop in its numbers this spring. And online viewers can still watch the shows at Comedy Central’s two sites, though its player is vastly inferior to Hulu’s.

But the move does illustrate the difficulty with Hulu’s business model: It is trying to build a business around other people’s content.

Hulu gets the ability to sell against network TV shows from its network TV owners–News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, GE’s (GE) NBC and Disney’s (DIS) ABC–but it can only keep 30 percent of the revenue. It generally gets better terms from other content providers, but it’s harder to get the really good stuff from them, particularly from cable TV, where programmers need to protect their existing revenue streams.

If the cable TV guys get their way and the world shifts to a “TV Everywhere” model–pay for cable TV, and you can watch all those shows on the Web, too–procuring shows will get much easier for Hulu. Because that conflict should go away.

But in a TV Everywhere world, the use case for Hulu sort of goes away too. Because in that model, you don’t really need a central hub for TV on the Web.

Meanwhile, Viacom (VIA) has now retreated from the Web’s two most popular video portals. You haven’t been able to watch Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube since the two companies went to court, and that conflict has been dragging on for nearly three years.

While an iPad out in the wild–held up by Stephen Colbert–got a lot of ink, here’s a video from last night’s Grammy Awards, which went all “Avatar” during a tribute to the late Michael Jackson–when a panoply of belt-it-out singers performed one of his posthumous songs with a 3-D twist.

In fact, much of the audience was wearing 3-D glasses–including Beyoncé pictured here–to properly experience the performance of “Earth Song” and its accompanying film, which was supposed to be part of Jackson’s “This Is It” tour.

Celine Dion, Jennifer Hudson, Smokey Robinson, Carrie Underwood and Usher sang the piece, along with a recording of Jackson.

Special 3-D glasses were also available at Target for home viewers of the music awards show, so if you still have them, use them for this video from the television show–and below it, Colbert with the new Apple (AAPL) device:

It’s hard to remember this conflict sometimes because it started all the way back in the spring of 2007, after Google offered $500 million to appease Sumner Redstone and company, then thought better of it. Viacom countered with a billion-dollar lawsuit claim, which has been dragging its way ever so slowly through the legal system since then.

The latest reminder: A report from CNET pointing out that Google (GOOG) has deposed Viacom (VIA) employees Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but that “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have yet to hand over documents the search giant’s lawyers have requested.

“The missed deadline isn’t amusing to Google,” Greg Sandoval relays.

This is theoretically important because both sides are trying to prove that their opponents’ employees knowingly uploaded copyrighted clips to the site.

If Viacom can prove that Chad Hurley and company were doing it, it bolsters its claim that YouTube knew it was violating copyright law and didn’t do anything about it. If Google can prove that “The Daily Show” or “South Park” dudes were doing it, it can argue that it’s impossible to tell when it was okay to run Viacom clips and when it was verboten.

Alas, in a slow-motion case like this, it’s impossible to imbue any particular move with particular weight. For instance: Google’s interest in deposing Stewart et al dates all the way back to August 2007. So the fact that the company’s lawyers have talked to him recently means that…it has talked to him recently.

Still, it does give us a chance to play the classic “South Park” YouTube tribute clip–legally, I should add.

Even if it never makes any money, Twitter certainly does provide fabulous material for television spoofs.

So far, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have done several funny bits on Comedy Central, deftly mocking the microblogging service.

And now, Conan O’Brien is doubling down with two skits so far dubbed “Twitter TRACKER” on GE (GE) unit NBC’s “The Tonight Show.”

In them, a loudmouthed voice delivers pointless celebrity tweets as a flock of blue cartoon Twitter birdies is murdered in various ingenious ways.

What’s not to like?

O’Brien, who is nicknamed CoCo by the Twitter TRACKER bully, hardly needs to work hard to make fun of real tweets like Ashton Kutcher’s mundanities, such as “Going to the grocery store need some fixins for a salad.”

There is also, of course, a snark-laced Web site and a Twitter page, so it looks like this Tweet-beatdown might just go on and on.

It should, if only for terms like: “Schprechen sie Tweetenshlize!”

Here are the online spoof videos so far (and click here to see the full interview with the Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams onstage at the D7 conference):

But at least it contains every Prince song ever recorded, right? Nope. From what I can tell, the only thing the gadget comes preloaded with is a 15-song, 40-minute concert video.

This wouldn’t even compute in the pre-Lehman era. So what gives?

Unlike other special-edition iPods from U2 and “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, you can’t get this one directly from Apple (AAPL). Instead, you have to buy it bundled alongside a high-end book of Prince photographs produced by Kraken Opus, a British publisher that says its mission is to create the “most epic, stunning, iconic publications ever seen in the world.”

And by Kraken Opus standards, by the way, the Prince book/iPod combo is a steal: The books the company produced for the Arsenal soccer team, for instance, can set you back $6,247–and comes with no gadget of any sort.

I’d love to send you off with a Prince video, but it’s awfully hard to find one on YouTube. His old record label, Warner Music Group (WMG), is feuding with Google (GOOG) and has taken down most of the official clips from the video site. And the artist himself is vigilant about taking down clips he doesn’t approve of. So we’ll have to settle for a few seconds of Stephen Colbert dancing to a golden oldie at the Smithsonian.

Welcome once more to Weekend Update! I’ll be filling in today for your regular host, Beth Callaghan, who’s on vacation.

And what sane person wouldn’t be, after the slew of Silicon Valley silliness inspired by April Fools Day this past week? Digital pranks were the name of the game as Google (GOOG) and others heaped so many tepid hoaxes upon us that we wanted to call April Fold so as to quickly end this round of gags.

But no bag of tricks was needed for one Web site to April Fool itself into crying wolf about an imminent Google (GOOG) acquisition of Twitter, when a real story around the corner was aboutGoogle turning Turbo Tax tweets into ads.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest jokesters of them all, The Onion, won one of the biggest awards in journalism, a Peabody, meaning that the best sense of humor goes to that panel of judges. And to Stephen Colbert, who was willing to entertain (for a while) Twitter spokesmodel Biz Stone’s biz-model-less thoughts in an interview on “The Colbert Report.” Also on BoomTown this week: Facebook’s former CFO Gideon Yu is out, as was a leaked memo from Mark Zuckerberg about Yu’s departure and the company’s situation.

A sense of humor is certainly an invaluable feather to have in your cap these days. Digital Daily wrote about the most recent doom-and-gloom predictions and events to happen in this econalypse, like analysts’ predictions of YouTube losing $470 million in 2009, the barren IPO-less wasteland VCs are bemoaning and a major global slump in semiconductor sales. Other headlines weren’t quite so dreary: Google’s foray into VC land, the folks at BlackBerry HQ celebrating surprisingly good fourth-quarter results and the world’s worst-kept secret, the anticipated merger between IBM (IBM) and Sun (JAVA).

There was a similar mix of dark clouds and silver linings over at MediaMemo. The National Collegiate Athletics Association forced Twitter and partners AT&T (T) and Federated Media to take down one of its first ad campaigns, “March Tweetness,” crying copyright foul. Also running afoul with big companies in legal waters, free music Web site Seeqpod filed for bankruptcy. And video site Veoh laid off a significant amount of staff and kicked out its old CEO, replacing him with founder Dmitry Shapiro and refocusing the company on its “Video Compass” browser plug-in.

Online video is generally a turbulent space these, but the waiting is the hardest part for Hulu when it comes to the rumored Disney deal in which Disney (DIS) seems to be playing the field. Other gems of the week were URL-shrinking Web service bit.ly’s raising of $2 million and media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s Kindle envy.

In a new Mossblog, Walt Mossberg gives us his first impressions of the BlackBerry App World store in which Research in Motion (RIMM) takes a bold step into what was formerly the sole domain of Apple (AAPL). In Personal Technology, Walt reviews a network hard drive from Western Digital (WDC) that makes the technology gloriously simple for everyone. And in Mossberg Solution, Katherine Boehret takes a look at several laptop trays, designed to protect the–ahem–family jewels and family members in general from laptops’ scorching undersides.

Finally, our exciting Woz-watch, after many weeks, has come to a sad end: Steve Wozniak was voted off “Dancing with the Stars” this week after one misstep too many. Down, but not out, the Apple co-founder swore that the “geeks shall inherit the earth”… just not the dance floor, any time soon. Please.

More next week.

Here’s the video of Twitter co-founder Biz Stone with Stephen Colbert last night on the Comedy Central cable television show.

Stone–the spokesmodel for the hot microblogging service–does very well and is even charming, even though Colbert nails the problems of the San Francisco-based Twitter cold in the lively interview.

“How would you make money?” asked Colbert, after some preliminary joking with Stone about Twitter’s 140-character limit.

When Stone went on about how Twitter planned to be a “strong, profitable, independent company,” Colbert was ready with a zinger.

“You and Pets.com.”

Still, it was semi-cute when Stone told Colbert that “if i have a son, I should name him Flint.”

Yabadaba–don’t, Biz.

(Stone’s actual first name, by the way, is Isaac.)

Here’s the video:

Stone (pictured here)–who has clearly become the chatty spokesmodel for the hot microblogging service at public events all over the place of late–is set to be a guest on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.”

Stone, of course, just updated everyone about the show on Twitter and also on his blog site.

“It’s past 2am here in NYC and I’m battling email until I pass out—tomorrow, I’m on the Colbert Report! I’ll keep you posted. 9 minutes ago

Just landed at JFK with my wife, @livia (who grew up in Manhattan) — looking forward to a couple days in NYC! about 4 hours ago

Normally I’d fly @jetblue but since I’m headed to NYC to be on Colbert tomorrow night I’m flying American (flight is delayed) about 11 hours ago”

I have no doubt it will be snarktastic, especially given the bulls-eye piece Stephen Colbert’s comic twin, Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show,” did on Twitter recently, nailing the unholy media obsession with tweeting.

Until the show, which we will post later, here is a very funny video Colbert did for our 2007 D: All Things Digital conference about the Internet, when Viacom (VIA) head Philippe Dauman was interviewed onstage, so Biz can better prepare for his comic grilling, um, interview.

And Stewart’s Twitter-bashing video is also below.

Stephen Colbert:

Jon Stewart: