The Virtual Revolution
The Great Levelling?
Watch on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXsf-EPiFss&feature=related
Twenty years on from the invention of the World Wide Web, Dr Aleks Krotoski looks at how it is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives. Joined by some of the web's biggest names - including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web's inventor - she explores how far the web has lived up to its early promise.
In the first in this four-part series, Aleks charts the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube, and traces an ongoing clash between the freedom the technology offers us, and our innate human desire to control and profit.
Enemy of the State?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX3-_kKSD04&feature=channel
Twenty years on from the invention of the World Wide Web, Dr Aleks Krotoski looks at how it is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives. Joined by some of the Web's biggest names - including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web's inventor - she explores how far the Web has lived up to its early promise.
Here, Aleks charts how the Web is forging a new brand of politics, both in democracies and authoritarian regimes.
With contributions from Al Gore, Martha Lane Fox, Stephen Fry and Bill Gates, Aleks explores how interactive, unmediated sites like Twitter and YouTube have encouraged direct action and politicised young people in unprecedented numbers.
Yet, at the same time, the Web's openness enables hardline states to spy and censor, and extremists to threaten with networks of hate and crippling cyber attacks.
The Cost of Free
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROvFWynd5xs&feature=relmfu
Twenty years on from its invention, Dr Aleks Krotoski continues her investigation of how the World Wide Web is transforming almost every aspect of our lives. She gives the lowdown on how, for better and for worse, commerce has colonised the web - and reveals how web users are paying for what appear to be 'free' sites and services in hidden ways.
Joined by some of the most influential business leaders of today's web, including Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon), Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), Chad Hurley (CEO of YouTube), Bill Gates, Martha Lane Fox and Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix), Aleks traces how business, with varying degrees of success, has attempted to make money on the web.
She tells the inside story of the gold rush years of the dotcom bubble and reveals how retailers such as Amazon learned the lessons. She also charts how, out of the ashes, Google forged the business model that has come to dominate today's web, offering a plethora of highly attractive, overtly free web services, including search, maps and video, that are in fact funded through a sophisticated and highly lucrative advertising system which trades on what we users look for.
Aleks explores how web advertising is evolving further to become more targeted and relevant to individual consumers. Recommendation engines, pioneered by retailers such as Amazon, are also breaking down the barriers between commerce and consumer by marketing future purchases to us based on our previous choices.
On the surface, the web appears to have brought about a revolution in convenience. As companies start to build up databases on our online habits and preferences, Aleks questions what this may mean for our notions of privacy and personal space in the 21st century.
Homo Interneticus? Or the Addiction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mANMbHEmAk&feature=relmfu
Dr Aleks Krotoski concludes her investigation of how the World Wide Web is transforming almost every aspect of our lives.
Joined by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Al Gore and the neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, Aleks examines the popularity of social networks such as Facebook and asks how they are changing our relationships.
And, in a ground-breaking test at University College London, Aleks investigates how the Web may be distracting and overloading our brains.
Electric Revolution
Joystick Generation
Watch on Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/8323312
Three-part series presented by historian Benjamin Woolley about popular games in Britain from the Iron Age to the Information Age, in which he unravels how an apparently trivial pursuit is a rich and entertaining source of cultural and social history.
In the final part, Woolley explores the journey games have taken from the board to the screen, reflecting the rapidly changing history of modern Britain.
In the 1980s, the power of our imagination was harnessed in early video games like Elite, putting the audience at the heart of a space adventure they could influence. The British boom years of the 90s introduced characters like Lara Croft to a world beyond video games and players were propelled into the internet age.
Woolley's investigation leads to the present day, where he finds our morality tested in the world of Grand Theft Auto and our identity becoming transported to the digital domain with virtual realms like Runescape and World of Warcraft.
Gameswipe
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n1j8q
Charlie Brooker sets his caustic sights on video games. Expect acerbic comment as he looks at the various genres, how they have changed since their early conception and how the media represents games and gamers. Features interviews with Dara O Briain, sitcom scribe Graham Linehan and Rab and Ryan from Consolevania.
Watch on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/zthemusic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvNuzx-aqWs&list=PLC613893F6AA8823B&index=1&feature=plpp_video
Upgrade Me
Duration: 1 hour
Watch on DVD…
Poet and gadget lover Simon Armitage explores people's obsession with upgrading to the latest technological gadgetry.
Upgrade culture drives millions to purchase the latest phones, flatscreen TVs, laptops and MP3 players. But is it design, functionality, fashion or friends that makes people covet the upgrade, and how far does the choice of gadgets define identity? Simon journeys across Britain and to South Korea in search of answers.
How Facebook Changed the World: The Arab Spring (Parts 1 & 2)
Episode 1: The story of how the Arab world erupted in revolution, as a new generation used the internet and social media to try to overthrow their hated leaders.
In the first of this two-part series, Mishal Husain charts events in Tunisia and Egypt by meeting those who led the revolts and showing the unique footage they shot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTcb1L9gkwA&list=UUxG3EU0ghoFM5i5Lzi3XkdQ&index=51&feature=plpp_video
Episode 2: The story of how the Arab world erupted in revolution, as a new generation used the internet and social media to try to overthrow their hated leaders.
In the last of this two part series, Mishal Husain meets those who spread the revolt to Libya and Bahrain, and those who are still fighting the Syrian regime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seYvH-kzX2s&list=UUxG3EU0ghoFM5i5Lzi3XkdQ&index=50&feature=plpp_video
Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeOlO_2nddY&feature=related
In just seven years, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from his Harvard college dorm to running a business with 800 million users, and a possible value of $100 billion. His idea to 'make the world more open and connected' has sparked a revolution in communication, and now looks set to have a huge impact on business too.
Emily Maitlis reports on life inside Facebook. Featuring a rare interview with Zuckerberg himself, the film tells the story of Facebook's creation, looks at the accuracy of The Social Network movie, and examines Facebook's plans to use the personal information it has collected to power a new kind of online advertising.
Secrets of the Superbrands: Technology (Ep.1 BBC)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU9Fv_o25xA&list=PLA7B5D2EA3E468090&index=1&feature=plpp_video
The first of a 3-part BBC series where superbrands are investigated. In part 1, Alex Riley explores the world of the technology superbrands - how they get us to buy their stuff, trust them and even idolise them. He meets the supergeeks who are inventing the future and finds out how some of the most powerful companies in the world really make their billions.
Fiction, Satire and Comedy
Black Mirror
Charlie Brooker, the writer of E4's Dead Set, returns with a suspenseful, satirical three-part mini-series that taps into collective unease about our modern world.
Watch both on DVD…
15 Million Merits
The second episode is a satire on entertainment shows and our insatiable thirst for distraction set in a sarcastic version of a future reality. In this world, everyone is confined to a life of strange physical drudgery. The only way to escape this life is to enter the 'Hot Shot' talent show and pray you can impress the judges.
The Entire History of You
Last in the series of Charlie Brooker's dark dramas. In the near future, everyone has access to a memory implant that records everything they do, see and hear - a sort of Sky Plus for the brain. You need never forget a face again... but is that always a good thing?
Nathan Barley
Series 1, Episode 1
Watch on 4oD:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/nathan-barley/4od
Baffled human wreck Dan Ashcroft watches in horror as his world is over-run with 24 carat berks, led by a strutting, brainless cock-of-the-walk called Nathan Barley, who, distressingly, has designs on Dan's sister Claire.
Nathan Barley is 26. He is a Webmaster, guerrilla filmmaker, screenwriter, DJ and in his own words, a 'self-facilitating media node'. Dan Ashcroft writes searing columns for Sugar Ape. He's considered astonishingly cool, but only by those he despises.Claire Ashcroft, 27, is Dan's sister. She is furious that no one will fund her hard-hitting documentary about a choir of reformed junkies. Nathan, Dan and Claire work in the industrial conversions of Hosegate. They are about to become spliced together in a three-way split. A happy ending is not guaranteed...
Spaced
Series 2, Episode 5
Watch on 4oD:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/spaced/4od#2921686
Surreal cult sitcom starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson - and more pop culture references than you can shake a light sabre at…
A night on the town for Tim and Daisy turns into a fight for survival as the dynamic duo come face to face with an old enemy (not to mention a few new ones).
