Who Invented the Internet? And Why?

66:10

Atari: Game Over chronicles the fall of the Atari Corporation through the lens of one of the biggest mysteries of all time, dubbed “The Great Video Game Burial of 1983.” As the story goes, the Atari Corporation, faced with an overwhelmingly negative response to “E.T.,” the video game for the Atari 2600, disposed of hundreds of thousands of unsold game cartridges by burying them in the small town of Alamogordo, New Mexico.

2014 • Technology

51:55

This documentary presented by Professor Simon Schaffer describes the amazing story of automata Designed and built with pen and paper in the 18th Century leveraging the mechanisms employed in making timepieces, these mechanical devices containing 1000’s of parts and are programmable to mimic human actions in Mechanical Theatre. The program describes how there development has led to the creation of the mechanical devices we take for granted today showing the first mechanical weaving looms allowing for the mass production of fabrics and in effect started the industrial revolution.

2013 • Technology

59:52

New whistleblowers and insiders from social media companies speak out to reveal how algorithms designed to connect people have been helping to tear them apart. With new testimony and documents, they expose a machine thriving on outrage and division as part of a business model, with radicalisation, real-world violence and fractured societies some of the consequences of a system built to shape how users think, feel and see the world.

2026 • Technology

10:05

The promise of quantum computers is that what would otherwise take a billion years to calculate, could be done in a few seconds. First-generation quantum computers have started to appear. Indeed, earlier this year, Google bought one, The D-Wave 2. How will this advance change our future lives?

5/10 • Catalyst: Season 1 • 2015 • Technology

52:52

Artificial intelligence is examined. Included: the effort to build intelligent machines by reverse-engineering the brain and by inventing completely new kinds of computers, with exponentially greater speed and processing power.

3 • Nova Wonders • 2018 • Technology

52:04

The failed experiment and the world's greatest crime-fighting tool. A clumsily dressed cut leads to the invention of plastics. How chance conversation and sausage poison changed the face of Hollywood. And a broken thermometer sets in motion a chain of events that frees a country from colonialism.

S1E2 • Oops, I Changed the World • 2022 • Technology