The BlackBerry PlayBook debuted last spring to much ballyhoo but it hasn’t exactly rocketed to the top of the charts. Research In Motion, the company that makes PlayBook and BlackBerry, is now apparently looking to dump inventory by slashing the price of the tablet to $299. It’s a savings of up to $400. Is it worth the price now?

Get ready for the hive mind. A new book explores the future of collaborative knowledge, where networks become more significant than singular experts. It’s already changed the way you work and search for data, and it will cause the world of knowledge to get a bit noisier. Also, the Robot Roundup finds robots that harvest hair follicles, chat on social networks and flirt.

Buckle your seatbelts — 2012 will be a crazy busy year in technology. A lot of amazing stuff going on. How do we know it’s going to be a big year? It’s technology! They’re all big years. From the PATRIOT Act to mesh networking, here are some predictions on what will make technology news in 2012.

The death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs probably drew the most headlines of any technology-related story this year. Though the world knew Jobs had been sick for some time, it still came as something of a shock to lose one of the people most associated with personal technology. But the death of Jobs wasn’t the only story this year. We asked some of the regular guests on our program to look back and tell us the big items of 2011.

Wikipedia has always been somewhat idyllic in its business model: an enormous treasury of knowledge accumulated and edited by the whole world. We all collaborate to build the world’s greatest encyclopedia. Still, the number of editors for the site has fallen flat recently, so Wikipedia is changing its editing software in hopes of becoming more user-friendly.

When it comes to technology, courts and legal scholars can run into some thorny issues. For instance, when does someone have a right to film you and put those images online? And what can you do about it once those images are up there? Jeffrey Rosen is with George Washington University Law School and has been thinking about how the Constitution addresses modern technology. Also in the show, bad grammar found in spam folders.

A recent deal between Verizon and several cable companies now has the Department of Justice investigating to see if the arrangement is anti-competitive. Verizon paid billions of dollars to a coalition of cable companies for a portion of the broadcast spectrum currently controlled by the cable operators. If the deal gets approved, the cable operators will be selling off their own ability to ever launch wireless services.

As computer chips and network connections make their way into more and more common household items, gadgets and appliances, the risk of someone hacking into those systems is on the rise, as well. In this episode, we talk with Yoshi Kohno, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, about the growing threat of hackers in this new networked world. But it's not just someone taking over your toy robot that you need to worry about.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he won’t go along with the National Transportation Safety Board’s recommendation that states ban all use of cell phones while driving. The NTSB says phones, even hands-free models, are too risky, too distracting, could lead to accidents, and are just a bad idea. LaHood says he doesn’t think hands-free is all that big a problem for the moment. The problem: There isn’t any conclusive evidence either way. Also, four of the most-searched terms online in 2011 involve looking for Facebook.