Technology and writing have been inextricably linked since the days of the scribes; however, during the past year, the connections appeared to become more and more explicit. Plenty of ink—both e- and otherwise—was spilled this year over the Kindle, the Nook, and the rise of Twitter in an effort to understand how writing will survive in a digital world. The New Oxford American Dictionary even selected the very Web 2.0 term “unfriend” as its 2009 Word of the Year.

Technology undoubtedly changes the way we write, think, and interact with one another, and in The Best Technology Writing 2009, guest editor Steven Johnson has selected a number of fascinating pieces highlighting those effects. In the video below, the first of a 3-part panel, Johnson mentions a handful—Clive Thompson’s piece on “Digital Intimacy” and Nicholas Carr’s on Google among them. The discussion also features danah boyd, Berkman Center fellow and Social Media Researcher of Microsoft Research New
England; Jack Balkin, Director of the
Information Society Project, Yale Law School; and Julian Dibbell, Contributing Editor at Wired and guest editor for The Best Technology Writing 2010 collection.

Submissions are currently being accepted for the 2010 collection, so be sure to nominate your favorite writers on science, engineering, the web, and whatever new new thing the techies dream up next.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKRAXV6d9YE&hl=en_US&fs=1&]