Topic technology
Panopticon
680 views
Using the metaphor of a Panopticon, this film looks at how technology and the convergence of vast data stores together are fuelling one of the most comprehensive attacks on privacy ever before seen. How is modern society being defined by such rapid changes? Where are we heading? By travelling to Germany to show how such attacks have been the basis for past dictatorships, Panopticon asks: Even if you have nothing to hide, do you have nothing to fear? What does privacy mean for you? When precisely does the surveillance state begin? What is your threshold? With a focus on the Netherlands, Panopticon offers a comprehensive analysis challenging the current herd-mentality and apathy about privacy in the modern world.
Subconscious War
1.38K views
Subconscious War is a video essay exploring the influences of media and the culture of violence on reality, and the cultivation of collective values in society. The film contrasts the writings of Aldous Huxley and Neil Postman's grim assessments; relating the concepts of works such as 'Brave New World' and 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' to the current cultural influences that foster today--corporate media and indeed media saturation, video games, television, and a pervasive technoculture, for example.
Cypherpunks
1.42K views
Cypherpunks is a movement originating from the 1980s aiming to improve Internet privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. With WikiLeaks being a recent offshoot of the many projects derived from the Cypherpunk movement, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange talks with three activists from the Cyberpunk world to cover the topics of mass surveillance and social control being tied directly into technology as modern society progressively intertwines with technological progress...
The Secret Robot War
1.92K views
Over the past decade, the United States military has shifted the way it fights its wars, deploying more technological systems in the battlefield than human forces. Today there are more than 7,000 drones and 12,000 ground robots in use by all branches of the military. These systems mean less deaths for US troops, but increased killings with less political risk for the United States. With lethal drone strikes being carried out in secret by the CIA and occurring outside of declared war zones such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the use of robots and drones evokes serious questions about the operations of the United States and what this means as more and more autonomy is developed for these technologies...
Rise of The Machines
872 views
Just as mobile phones and wireless capability dramatically changed the way technology interacts with modern society, drones--or 'Unmanned Aerial Vehicles'--are set to become the next major influence in technocratic life, directly impacting and seriously expanding the already extensive capabilities of surveillance. Rise Of The Machines takes a look at already developed drone technology and how governments, military and even civilians are rushing to adopt the gadgets which can be purchased off the shelf for just a few hundred dollars and controlled by already existing smart phones. So what will a world of drones look like? And what of the many, serious, unexplored implications on how society will function in a world of drones?
Robot Wars
401 views
Robot Wars visits companies in the United States that are producing robots for the military to disarm bombs, fly unmanned aircraft (drones), withstand repeated attacks and even choose targets and fire without any human intervention. The rapid development of autonomous robots and the use of them right now is surging ahead at a crazy rate, all with little regard to ethical and psychological questions, concerns about technological privilege and other obvious impacts. With military robots currently being operated using video game controllers, is the line being blurred between fantasy and reality?
Attack of The Drones
482 views
The latest in the string of controversies as part of the United States' ongoing "war on terror", is the military's growing reliance on "Unmanned Aerial Vehicles" otherwise known as 'drones', evidenced by the international reaction to recent drone missile attacks along the border in Pakistan. The military is also deploying other technological advancements alongside, such as robots in the battlefield and drones that work in swarms. Is this just a big computer game? A new tech-driven arms race? It doesn't end there though -- drones are now creeping into use by police and the intelligence services as a surveillance tool, and even into commercial and civilian use...
Surviving Progress
1.32K views
The dominant culture measures itself by the speed of "progress". But what if this so-called progress is actually driving us full force towards collapse? Surviving Progress shows how past civilisations were destroyed by "progress traps" -- alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the environment accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilisation escape a final, catastrophic progress trap?
Erasing David
879 views
Film maker David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world -- Britain. When David receives a letter stating that both he and his daughter are amongst the 25 million residents whose details have been lost by the government in a massive data breach, David sets out to investigate some potential impacts of such data being lost in a society of mass surveillance. Erasing David documents the test where David hires two private detectives to track him down as he chooses to 'disappear' for 30 days to see if he can avoid being caught amongst the vast data trails generated by modern society...
Free The Network
448 views
Centred around the concept of open computer networks that contradictorily end up running closed corporate-controlled communication portals like Facebook and Twitter, Free The Network follows two young men who camp out at Zuccotti Park building wireless access points to connect their devices as part of the "Occupy" movement. Through interviews along the way, Free The Network examines the current state of the Internet in the midst of the protest, and perhaps poses a larger question: Is the "democratisation of technology", along with the widespread emergence of clicktivism, a framework to drive social change in western societies?
The Net — Unabomber, LSD and The Internet
1.41K views
The Net explores the complex back-story of Ted Kaczynski -- the infamous 'Unabomber', as a prism to the often unexamined side of the history of the Internet. The film combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting counter cultural responses to the cybernetic revolution. For those who resist these pervasive systems of technology, the Unabomber came to symbolise an ultimate figure of refusal. For those that embrace it, as did and do the champions of media art like Marshall McLuhan, Nam June Paik and Stewart Brand, the promises of worldwide networking and instantaneous communication outweighed the perils. The Net links these multiple nodes of cultural and political thought like the Internet itself. Circling through themes of utopianism, anarchism, terrorism, CIA, LSD, MKULTRA, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Net exposes conspiracies and upheavals, secrets and cover-ups as the subversive history of the Internet...
The Real Mobile Phone War
598 views
As high-technology permeates further into the industrialised world, manufacturers will go to any lengths to get the raw materials to make their gadgets. Coltan from the Congo is one such rare ingredient. Few in the west know where their gadgets come from and that in the middle of Africa much human suffering is created in the pursuit of "technological advancement"...
Blood In The Mobile
948 views
Modern society loves mobile phones -- the selection between different models and gadgets has never been bigger. But the production of this technology has a hidden, dark, bloody side. The main minerals used to produce mobile phones are coming from the mines in the Eastern DR Congo. The Western World is buying these minerals up at a furious rate, financing a bloody civil war which, during the last 15 years, has cost the lives of more than 5 million people. Blood In The Mobile explains the connections between mobile phones and the civil war in the Congo, while technology corporations whitewash the issue to "supply and demand" and claim ignorance...
There’s No Tomorrow
1.08K views
There's No Tomorrow is a short animation that goes through the issues surrounding the collapse of industrial civilisation -- by collating the interconnectedness of resource depletion, population, energy problems and economic growth. Also examined are the many problems inherent in some proposed solutions, such as 'change-by-personal-consumer-choice' and the use of technology...
The Light Bulb Conspiracy
2.89K views
The Light Bulb Conspiracy investigates the history of Planned Obsolescence -- the deliberate shortening of product life span to guarantee consumer demand -- by charting its beginnings in the 1920s with a cartel set up expressly to limit the life span of light bulbs, right up to present-day products involving cutting edge electronics such as the iPod. The film travels to France, Germany, Spain and the US to find witnesses of a business practice which has become the basis of the modern economy, and brings back graphic pictures from Ghana where discarded electronics are piling up in huge cemeteries for electronic waste, causing intense environmental destruction and health problems...
Transcendent Man
2.99K views
Ray Kurzweil, noted inventor and futurist, is a man who refuses to accept the inevitability of death. He proposes that his Law of Accelerating Returns -- the exponential increase in the growth of information technology -- is first of all sustainable and will result in a "singularity", a point where humans and machines will converge, allowing one to 'transcend' biological 'limits'. But there are many who share deep concerns about the consequences of working towards such a world...
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
41.19K views
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is a series about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built -- "Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers."
Blood Coltan
326 views
Blood Coltan travels to eastern Congo, where a bloody war is happening over a precious metal called Coltan -- a raw material used in electronic devices such as computers, televisions and mobile phones. The demand for Coltan is driven by the west, funding the war in Congo between rebel militias and children as young as ten who work the mines hunting for this precious material of the technocratic age...
Age of Transitions
2.16K views
Transhumanists claim a beautiful and apparently now-not-so-distant utopian future made possible by artificial intelligence, life extension and cybernetic technologies. But upon examining the convergence of these technologies and the history behind them, Age Of Transitions details how this movement of "transcending human limits" was born out of pseudo-science eugenics, and what the implications are for a world divided by the have's and have-not's.
Good Copy, Bad Copy
799 views
Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances. Featuring interviews with many people with various perspectives on copyright, including copyright lawyers, producers and artists, Good Copy Bad Copy documents that "creativity itself is on the line" and that a balance needs to be struck, or that there is a conflict, between protecting the right of those who own intellectual property and the rights of future generations to create...
The Intelligence Revolution
1.80K views
Scientist Michio Kaku explains how artificial intelligence will revolutionise homes, workplaces and lifestyles, and how virtual worlds will become so realistic that they will rival the physical world. Robots with human-level intelligence may finally become a reality, and in the ultimate stage of mastery, we'll even be able to merge our minds with machine intelligence. For the first time, see how a severely depressed patient can be turned into a happy person at the push of a button -- all thanks to the convergence of neuroscience and artificial intelligence...
Nerds 2.0.1 — A Brief History of The Internet
1.28K views
Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet is a documentary series written and hosted by Mark Stephens under the pseudonym Robert X. Cringely as a sequel to Triumph of the Nerds. The series follows on by documenting the development of ARPANET, the Internet, the World Wide Web and the resulting dot-com bubble of the mid and late 1990s...
Digital Nation
1.21K views
Within a single generation, digital media, the Internet and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialise and even conduct war. But is technology moving faster than we can adapt to it? Is our constantly-wired-world causing us to lose as much as we’ve apparently gained? In Digital Nation, Douglas Rushkoff and Rachel Dretzin explore what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world...
Earthlings — Animal Testing and Torture
705 views
Humanity is absolutely dependent on animals as part of life. In industrial society however, this has extended to animals as pets, 'entertainment' and for expendable use in scientific research -- animals are tortured for 'scientific tests', locked in cages as pets and at the zoo and are bred on mass for cheap meat. What does this say about industrial civilisation? Earthlings conducts an in-depth study into pet stores, puppy mills and animals shelters, as well as factory farms, the leather and fur trades, sports and entertainment industries, and the medical and scientific profession, using hidden cameras to directly show the day-to-day practices of some of the largest industries in the world...
Technocalyps
7.23K views
Are we prepared for dealing with the prospect that humanity is not the end of evolution? The latest findings in genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics and nanotechnology appear in the media every day, but almost no analysis is found of their common aim -- to exceed human “limitations” and capability. Literally to transcend humanity, or transhumanism. This three part series covers the notion of transhumanism and conducts enquiry into the scientific, ethical and metaphysical dimensions of such a technological development...
The Cyborg Experiments
1.34K views
Kevin Warwick is an internationally renowned Professor and researcher in the field of Cybernetics -- the study of Artificial Intelligence, human control functions, robotics and cybernetic organisms. His work presented in this video shows how implant and electrode technology can be used to create biological brains for robots, to enable human enhancement and possible therapeutic effects for neurological illness. In any case, the end goal is human enhancement, or "transhumanism", which inevitably stirs up many social, ethical and philosophical questions...
Steal This Film
796 views
Presenting accounts from prominent players such as The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, and the Pirate Party in the Swedish piracy culture, Steal This Film documents the movement against intellectual property. In particular, the film provides critical analysis of the alleged regulatory capture attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO...
RIP — A Remix Manifesto
658 views
Web activist and film-maker Brett Gaylor explores the issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The film's central protagonist is Girl Talk -- a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Created over a period of six years, RIP -- A Remix Manifesto features the collaborative remix work of hundreds of people...