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The Stingray: Part two

   2022    Culture
In this sixth and final episode, the FBI escalates its pursuit of an elusive hacker, but he soon turns the tables by questioning the legality of a key tool in their investigation.
We'll also find out how one man is being watched by the government for alleged Russian election interference. Is he responsible, or just a patsy for more powerful people? We'll have to get to the end to find out.
Series: Web of Make Believe: Death Lies and the Internet

The Story of Maths The Language of the Universe

   2008    Science
This four-part British television series outlines aspects of the history of mathematics. Written and presented by University of Oxford professor Marcus du Sautoy, it is a co-production between the Open University and the BBC. In the first episode, Marcus du Sautoy in Egypt uncovers use of a decimal system based on ten fingers of the hand and discovers that the way we tell the time is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system. In Greece, he looks at the contributions of some of the giants of mathematics including Plato, Archimedes and Pythagoras, who is credited with beginning the transformation of mathematics from a counting tool into the analytical subject of today. A controversial figure, Pythagoras’ teachings were considered suspect and his followers seen as social outcasts and a little be strange and not in the norm. There is a legend going around that one of his followers, Hippasus, was drowned when he announced his discovery of irrational numbers. As well as his work on the properties of right angled triangles, Pythagoras developed another important theory after observing musical instruments. He discovered that the intervals between harmonious musical notes are always in whole number intervals.
Series: The Story of Maths

The Surveillance Capitalists

   2019    Technology
Everywhere you go, you generate a cloud of data. You're trailing data, everything that you do is producing data. And then there are computers looking at that data that are learning, and these computers are essentially trying to serve you better. They're trying to personalize things to you. They're trying to adapt the world to you. So on the one hand, this is great, because the world will get adapted to you without you even having to explicitly adapt it. There's also a danger, because the entities in the companies that are in control of those algorithms don't necessarily have the same goals as you, and this is where I think people need to be aware that, what's going on, so they can have more control over it.
We came into this new world thinking that we were users of social media and search engines. It didn't occur to us that social media and search engines were actually using us.
Series: In the Age of AI

The TikTok Effect

   2023    Technology
What connects amateur sleuths turning up at crime scenes, anti-social behaviour in schools and riots? Marianna Spring has spent one year investigating harmful behaviour on TikTok spilling out into the real-world. As well as crunching the numbers, Marianna tracks down TikTok users, victims and former employees to interrogate and expose how extremely high engagement on TikTok around particular topics appears to be creating these 'frenzies'.
The documentary explores how users go to extreme lengths in order to get more engagement in a battle for followers and likes. Marianna investigates the role TikTok's algorithm and format plays in what’s happening and reveals insiders’ concerns about the app. The film seeks to find out if this is the real danger and what impact it is having on society.

The Venus Project: Paradise or Oblivion

   2012    Technology
This documentary details the root causes of the systemic value disorders and detrimental symptoms caused by our current established system. This video presentation advocates a new socio-economic system, which is updated to present-day knowledge, featuring the life-long work of Social Engineer, Futurist, Inventor and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco, which he calls a Resource-Based Economics.

Total Trust

   2023    Culture
The digital possibilities of social control in China have led to an unprecedented level of state surveillance. Through self-censorship or spying on neighbors, surveillance covers not only those perceived as a threat by the government, but increasingly and ever more totally the ordinary citizen: whether buying flowers, taking your child to school, or taking out the trash at night. Big Data and digital technologies are already being used as weapons to curtail freedoms. Step by step, the social and political behavior of the Chinese is changing.
The documentary explores, in intimate detail, digital social control in China by following the experiences of two families and a journalist. Film-maker Jialing Zhang gives an exclusive and previously impossible intimate insight into the interior of China and tells a deeply disturbing story of how the state uses technology to control its citizens as well as propaganda to convince its people to trust it. She tells a deeply disturbing story about technology, (self-) censorship and abuse of power.
Space Deepest Secrets

Space Deepest Secrets

2020  Technology
Secrets of the Octopus

Secrets of the Octopus

2024  Nature
Leaving Neverland

Leaving Neverland

2019  Culture
History of the World

History of the World

2012  History
The Jinx

The Jinx

  History
Wings

Wings

  Nature
Cooked

Cooked

2016  Culture