The boundaries between man and machine, between technology and nature, are becoming increasingly blurred and might even disappear completely in the future. Information technology, genetic engineering and nanotechnology are not only making considerable inroads into society, but also more and more directly into human nature. The day when Homo sapiens is able to consciously design and radically change himself is not far away.
The distance between mankind and machines has never been so narrow. We and they are so close in fact that doubts are being cast as to what it is to be human. Mankind's future is being played out now. What if robots could make us immortal?
Our demand for raw materials is enormous and the mineral and ore mines can hardly keep up with the growing demand. Weirdly, we're surrounded by raw materials! They're in our cars, in the underground tunnels we use to travel to work, in the pavement that leads to our houses, in the bridges we cross, and they're in our homes. In European cities, there are approx. 4.500 kg of iron, 340 kg of aluminum, 200 kg of copper, 40 kg of zinc and 210 kg of lead attributed to each inhabitant.
An industrial revolution is under way. Super-intelligent robots are carrying out ever more complex tasks. In Saudi Arabia, some have evolved so much that they have acquired the status of citizen! But workers are struggling to find their place in this new world and even the creators suspect that robots are destroying more jobs than they create. Is society prepared for such upheavals?
Since childhood we’d been promised that the 21st century would bring us dramatic new technologies like flying cars and utopian cities. Instead it bought us the smartphone, social media, virtual societies and online gaming. As it turns out these technologies began to transform society almost as dramatically as the moon colonies we’d been expecting.
Everything that develops and changes in nature is folded: mountains, blossoms, the brain...Life is an unending series of folding and unfolding. Researchers in robotics, medicine, nanotechnologies, are embracing this "origami philosophy", trying to understand and duplicate nature's folding principles.
Children as young as three are becoming addicted to mobiles, harming their development and causing possible long-term damage. We follow some of the youngest cases and hear how our brains are affected by exposure to screens. We also learn how platforms like snapchat or facebook are engineered to make them hyper-addictive. Today, scientists are convinced that screens affect our brain development.
In the last few years, the data stream flowing through the internet has turned into a tsunami: Ninety percent of the information sitting on the world’s servers was created in the last two years. This total digitization opens up completely new possibilities. Suddenly, our entire lives can be modelled mathematically - and become predictable. We show how predictive analytics is being used today and ask how our lives will change if our future becomes computable.
In Europe the information technology of every state administration and its institutions – military, police, fiscal authorities etc. – is based on Microsoft programs. This exposes us to a high technical and political security risk. Is our digital sovereignty at stake?
The Secret Life of Materials takes us on a journey to meet the pioneers of material science and reveal their extraordinary discoveries that are transforming the world around us.
At a time when jobs in the tech sector are outpacing growth in all other sectors, where are all the women? Some of the most important pioneer coders were women but today, only 15% of software engineers in Silicon Valley are. This lack of diversity can have serious consequences – as was the case with airbags, designed by and modelled on men and often fatal to women, whose smaller size wasn’t taken into account.
What, and who, powers the internet? If the internet were a country, it would be the fifth largest consumer of electricity in the world. A whopping 247 billion emails are sent through the web every day, and growing. Though it is thought of as a ’green’ method of communication, the virtual universe is just as damaging for the environment as it is heavy in its energy consumption.
Off-grid is not a state of mind. It is not about being out of touch, living in a remote place, or turning off your mobile phone. Off-grid simply means living without a connection to the electric and natural gas infrastructure. From 2011 to 2013 Jonathan Taggart (Director) and Phillip Vannini (Producer) spent two years travelling across Canada to find 200 off-gridders and visit them in their homes.
Acclaimed journalist Paul Moreira investigates how Russia manipulates public opinion, undermines democratic governments and attempts to alter world events. The public face of foreign policy: the state news channels, Sputnik and Russia Today. But working in the shadows is the hidden part: the hackers and trolls pushing the Russian agenda... The Russians know that public perception of their country has reached a new low. Russophobia is massive. Their message is tainted with illegitimacy.
Artificial Intelligence and Big Data: A digital revolution in waiting? Already plays a major role in the developed world; from transport logistics to healthcare and national security. But we're only just scratching the surface. From Ireland's 'smart cities' in Europe's Silicon Valley to China's dystopian Social Credit system, Dataland shows us the breadth of latent potential being unleashed by the world's top data scientists.
