Tuesday, March 23, 2010

BBC programme on the WWW...audio files

Twenty years on from the invention of the World Wide Web, Dr Aleks Krotoski looks at how it is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives.
Joined by some of the web's biggest names - including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web's inventor - she explores how far the web has lived up to its early promise.

For the complete website dedicated to The Virtual Revolution, http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution





Part One: The Great Levelling
In the first in this four-part series, Aleks charts the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube.

She also traces an ongoing clash between the freedom the technology offers us, and our innate human desire to control and profit.



Part Two: Enemy Of The State
Aleks charts how the Web is forging a new brand of politics, both in democracies and authoritarian regimes.

With contributions from Al Gore, Martha Lane Fox, Stephen Fry and Bill Gates, the programme explores how interactive, unmediated sites like Twitter and YouTube have encouraged direct action and politicised young people in unprecedented numbers.

Yet, at the same time, the Web's openness enables hardline states to spy and censor, and extremists to threaten with networks of hate and crippling cyber attacks.



Part Three: The Cost Of Free
Aleks gives the lowdown on how, for better and for worse, commerce has colonised the web - and reveals how web users are paying for what appear to be 'free' sites and services in hidden ways.

Joined by some of the most influential business leaders of today's web - including Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon), Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), Chad Hurley (CEO of YouTube) and Bill Gates, the programme traces how business - with varying degrees of success - has attempted to make money on the web.

She tells the inside story of the gold rush years of the dotcom bubble, and reveals how retailers such as Amazon learned the lessons.

The programme also charts how, out of the ashes, Google forged the business model that has come to dominate today's web, offering a plethora of highly attractive, overtly free web services - including search, maps and video - that are in fact funded through a sophisticated and highly lucrative advertising system which trades on what we users look for.



Part Four: Homo Interneticus?

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, the programme 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.

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