The last programme in The Virtual Revolution series, Homo Interneticus, broadcasts this Saturday night, 20 February 2010, at 8:15pm.
This is the programme that aligns closest with my most recent research interests, and the one that notched up all the interviews with the people I referenced in my thesis. Although the whole series offered an extraordinary opportnity to meet some of the greats of the Web, I was most excited in all about meeting Professor Sherry Turkle, whom we filmed for this programme in her lovely home in Boston, who’s own study of online communities in the mid-1990s inspired my return to academia.
In this programme, we tackle the nature of community, the evolution of a distributed and networked identity and the physiological changes that may be occurring as a result of this new technological medium. Really meaty, juicy big ideas. From the official blurb:
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.
In addition to Turkle, there are also contributions from Stephen Johnson, Baronness Susan Greenfield, Professor Robin Dunbar, Mark Zuckerberg and Professor David Nicholas. This is also the programme that took us to South Korea, the most wired nation on Earth, where we sought to understand what we may have to face as we continue to inextricably integrate the Web into our lives over the next few decades.
Read more in the Making Of and see what contributor Ben Parr found out when he turned the tables on the programme 4 crew.
Don’t forget, you can play the spot-the-programme-three-pics in my production Flickr stream while you watch, and I’ll be on Twitter as it broadcasts.
Comments
Hey Aleks. First, thank you for a great programme. I look forward to BBC2 on Saturdays. I don’t know if you’ll see this message at all, but I would like to know the name of that scientist you mentioned when introducing the concept of ‘the Loop’. I would watch the show online to find out but I’m not in the UK, so I don’t have access to it unfortunately. I’m interested in the concept so I would love to read more about it. Hope someone can help me on that. Thanks.
Thanks for a very enjoyable series – thought the quote in yesterday’s prog was most profound: "the internet has shifted the motivation of ‘I feel something, I want to call’ to ‘I want to feel something, I need to call’. That seems to underpin the whole psychology of social networking.
Also enjoyed the early 90’s electronica of Fluke, Underworld, Aphex Twin, et al – your choice of music?! (You might like my little band in that case ‘Cassette Electrik’ – see my website url)
Anyway, look forward to the next series studying web 4.0!
Oli
oops, spelt the url wrong!
An insightful episode Aleks, I particularly liked the link to Vannevar Bush’s essay. I was left asking two questions:
Is there surely not a link between social networking and one’s obsession with oneself? Facebook and Twitter’s popularity surely owe something to our need to draw attention to ourselves and these sites let us become mini-celebrities within these environments. This might explain why we have so many more Facebook ‘friends’ than the optimum 150 – these are fans of our lives, not our friends?!
I also wondered about the influence of the writers of this software and whether this has any bearing at all? Are the personalities of software writers directing this digital, social evolution or is this merely a catalyst?
I look forward to a follow-up series.