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From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, James Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He also provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information, including Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, and Claude Shannon.
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"System Error" exposes the root of our current predicament: how big tech's relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get. Armed with an understanding of how technologists think and exercise their power, three Stanford professors share their provocative insights and concrete solutions to help everyone understand what is happening, what is at...
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"Technology and increasing levels of education expose people to more information than ever before. These gains, however, also fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that derails debates on numerous issues. With only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be as informed as doctors and diplomats. All voices demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary...
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"One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way, and Mr. Friedman certainly succeeds in that goal," the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in The New York Times, reviewing The World is Flat in 2005. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman brilliantly demystifies the new flat world for listeners, making sense of the advances in technology and communications
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"A follow up to Pico Iyer's essay 'The Joy of Quiet,' The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. Why would a man who seems able to go everywhere and do anything--like the international heartthrob and Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen--choose to spend years sitting still and going nowhere? What can Nowhere...
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"Over the last two decades, there has been an inescapable rise of anger and aggression across our planet. Hate speech has become increasingly prevalent online, Western governments are turning towards authoritarianism and populism, and extremist groups are rising across both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum. Every day, it seems, we're hearing more angry voices and fearful opinions, we're seeing more threats and frightening news,...
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The Digital Age is as transformative as the Industrial Revolution and Joshua Cooper Ramo explains how to survive. He is a policy expert who has advised the most powerful nations and corporations, says yes; if people are ready to ride the disruption. Drawing on examples from business, science, and politics, Ramo illuminates people's transformative world. Start by imagining a near future when America's greatest power is not its military or its economy,...
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While tracing the spread of English via Internet technology, this program considers the implications of such de facto linguistic hegemony in a world of high-tech haves and have-nots. In addition, the program examines the simultaneous standardization and fragmentation of English as it is acquired by non-native English-speakers in Africa and Asia. Interviews with specialists drawn from WorldCom and Sony subsidiary So-Net, the Library of Congress and...
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What is the price of free speech? Protected by their First Amendment rights and the Internet's cultural philosophy of "post it all and let the readers decide," American hate groups are having a field day on the World Wide Web, creating virulent virtual communities of intolerance. In this program, ABC News anchor Ted Koppel investigates the proliferation of hate online with Don Black, founder of the white nationalist Web site Storm Front, and Floyd...
11) War and Peace
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In the period between the two World Wars, composers sought to express in music the jarring and discordant sense that civilization was giving way to barbarism. During the same time, jazz burst upon the international musical scene. Performers include the Moscow Classical Ballet Company, Maxim Shostakovich conducting his father's Symphony No. 7, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Sir Peter Pears and Galina Vishnevskaya in Britten's War Requiem, and an electric...
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Explores the ability of body language to reinforce or contradict the message we are sending verbally. Students will understand the importance of how we dress and present ourselves in order to make a good impression. Differing eye expressions are examined as a powerful body language tool, as is the sense of touch. Mixed messages are also investigated.
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"Since its creation during the Cold War, the Internet, together with the World Wide Web, personal computers, tablets, and smartphones, has ushered in the Digital Revolution, one of the greatest shifts in society since the Industrial Revolution. There are many positive ways in which the Internet has contributed to the world, but as a society we are less aware of the Internet's deeply negative effects. In 2007, Andrew Keen, a longtime Silicon Valley-based...
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This film explores the murky and fast-paced world of hackers out to steal money and identities and wreak havoc with people's online lives, and the scientists who are joining forces to help defeat them. Horizon meets the two men who uncovered the world's first cyber weapon, the pioneers of what is called ultra paranoid computing, and the computer expert who worked out how to hack into cash machines.
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"The Equality Machine ignites a deeply informed, aggressively researched conversation about the path to digital era equality. From closing the gender pay gap to exposing and correcting biases in hiring and marketing, tracking and preventing workplace harassment, and diversifying the cultural images and voices we see and hear online, to increasing the privacy and safety of women and girls, artificial intelligence, big data, and digital platforms can...
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Gambling is the world's third-largest industry, and the Web has made it more global than ever. One in twenty Americans gamble online, an illegal activity under the Wire Act which forbids interstate bookmaking over phone lines. This program looks at the explosive proliferation of Internet gaming and how America-its people and its government-are reacting to it. To present an overview of gambling in the electronic era, the video canvasses many perspectives,...
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This program examines the "selfish gene" hypothesis, laying out an interconnected tale of Western imperialism, African genocide, and the unusual psyches of the men who developed the theory. Working in an era that dubbed human beings "soft machines controlled by onboard computers," William Hamilton wondered why, if we are genetically programmed merely to survive, do some people behave altruistically? Together with computer scientist George Price he...
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Since the time of Stonehenge, now thought to be a possible lunar observatory, up until today's age of highly sophisticated telescopes, man has developed technology to assist in exploring the skies. Modern Marvels traces the history of the technology behind mankind's stargazing.
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The Information Age has been hailed as a quantum leap forward for humanity-an opportunity to finally achieve Marshall McLuhan's "global village" in which "the medium is the message. But what kind of people are being created in cyberspace? While computer technology has changed virtually all aspects of life, critics argue that this technology is contributing to the growing social isolation of individuals. This program examines just what the implications...