Digital Nation – my new documentary – Tuesday 2/2 on PBS

Digital Nation – a PBS Frontline documentary I’ve been working on for, gosh, two years now – is finally airing this coming Tuesday evening, Feb 2, at 9pm on pretty much all PBS stations in US. (I know: that’s during the Lost premiere that even Obama feared going up against. But you can Tivo Lost, watch us live, and watch Lost after without the commercials.) For those of you outside the viewing area or without TV’s, you can watch the whole thing anytime from broadcast onwards by going to http://pbsdigitalnation.org

Meanwhile, I’m happy to announce that Frontline has agreed to let me host a series of Roundtable discussions following the broadcast. One per month, with invited guests and running commentary from you. (I’m shooting for something like the Talmudic format Steven Johnson used for Feed magazine – still the best threaded dialogues I can remember happening online between a central conversation and the general public. With any luck, these Roundtables will be the next main thing I’m doing – and I really do need quality conversation to happen there to keep it alive.

The above clip – Patrick Stewart on Twitter, the iPhone, and his passion for gaming – is not in the show. But it is an example of the kind of conversations and guests we’ll be having in the Roundtables – both by text and video.

So please, come to pbsdigitalnation.org after the show and share your thoughts with the people who were in it, see the discussion in progress, and push the participants to go deeper. Most important, suggest topics and guests – including yourself – you’d like to see on there.

Posted on 29 January '10 by Douglas, under Uncategorized.

12 Comments to “Digital Nation – my new documentary – Tuesday 2/2 on PBS”

#1 Posted by John R. Sedivy (29.01.10 at 17:59 )

I enjoyed the short video and look forward to seeing your appearance on the show. I can certainly relate to Patrick Stewart’s statements – the iPhone feeling like an extension of myself, the joy of having information at my fingertips, and the stack of unopened games for fear of losing myself within the game. Well said!

#2 Posted by Thomas (29.01.10 at 19:22 )

I’m really looking forward to the new Frontline.

I think hearing Patrick Stewart talking about the iPhone being “an extension of who he is” is absolutely hilarious. You don’t have to be much of a trekie to know about the Borgs. And now we have this:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9130685/Elgan_Don_t_look_now_but_you_re_a_cyborg

#3 Posted by mason (29.01.10 at 19:42 )

I bet his Picard could manage with 140 characters. OTOH Spinners’ Data would have 2 be 1 too. To a talent like Stewart though, Tweeting could be like Michael Dorn’s Worf bidding the cowboy Borg astride the deflector array, “Twitter This!” Then the huddled masses could assimilate more of Stewart’s thought during the performance or afterward. Ah, but would the performative magic be the same if we knew what resources Stewart resourced? Na! Strike me as a sub twit or tweeter. Unworthy, unworthy!

I vant to tweet your memes! Heh Heh Heh Heh Bwahhahahaha!

-mason

#4 Posted by Brad (30.01.10 at 00:47 )

Sounds fascinating. Especially the roundtable discussions. I think we definitely need to catch up with ourselves and figure out why we are using technology as we do: decide what to keep and what to trash. It is “nice” to check the weather before you go outside, but is that the culmination of a network of billions of people – a series of small comforts? I don’t think all of this addiction to comfort and small pleasures is necessarily a good thing. So that’s more of an issue of human-computer interface. I suppose the bigger issues of how the information age can affect our health, minds, and freedom will be fleshed out.

#5 Posted by tristan (31.01.10 at 03:38 )

congratulations, douglas! looking forward to seeing it.

#6 Posted by Ricardo B. Giuliani (01.02.10 at 19:04 )

I just finished watching the documentary online, and it is really good! It raised TONS of questions about the digital life and it pro and cons… I enjoy thinking about it and watching how the world is being built in this new paradigm… very interesting, powerful and a bit scary :)

I also just bought you book (Life Inc) this weekend and I will start reading it… so I might be coming more often to your blog and leaving some comments :)

Thanks for the amazing documentary

Ricardo.

#7 Posted by TheChaoSaysMu (02.02.10 at 11:10 )

Excellent! I have been long awaiting this. Thank you Douglas, and thank you PBS.

#8 Posted by mason (02.02.10 at 13:45 )

Great tunes tristian! & what you said

#9 Posted by DoctorJay (03.02.10 at 10:14 )

Oh man, that military section, with the killer drones being controlled from miles away, was really scary. When it the “Army Experience” coming to a mall near me?

#10 Posted by mason (03.02.10 at 12:39 )

Hey man!
Even without the “arcade”
It’s been in a mall near you since 9.11
But don’t go around holding signs unless you’re trying to bring in business or, who knows, they might pick you off at a few thousand feet.

#11 Posted by jake (20.02.10 at 21:22 )

yeah iphones were the one thing star trek *didn’t* predict

#12 Posted by Dan C (12.04.10 at 20:55 )

I liked when Sir Stewart said “Maybe I like complexity.”

I once wrote this:
Good work is the intentional complication of a task. Quality measurement and control is the intentional simplification and specialization of the same task. To produce a good chair, you carefully cut, sand , and polish it until you are done finding things to sand and polish. To produce a quality chair, you set up a system which makes as few cuts, the least number of sanding requirements, and a finite number of steps to completion. The quality chair may be used, accepted, and may even last a finite period of time. The good chair will be loved, traded, gifted, repaired, and eventually worn into kindling.

You can find it here: http://www.equipment-reliability.com/newsletter/news1/nl1.htm