Last Watched

"Information"  Sort by

Words on a Page

   2020    History
Writing itself is 5,000 years old, and for most of that time words were written by hand using a variety of tools. The Romans were able to run an empire thanks to documents written on papyrus. Scroll books could be made quite cheaply and, as a result, ancient Rome had a thriving written culture. With the fall of the Roman Empire, papyrus became more difficult to obtain. Europeans were forced to turn to a much more expensive surface on which to write: Parchment. Medieval handwritten books could cost as much as a house, they also represent a limitation on literacy and scholarship.
No such limitations were felt in China, where paper had been invented in the second century. Paper was the foundation of Chinese culture and power, and for centuries how to make it was kept secret. When the secret was out, paper mills soon sprang up across central Asia. The result was an intellectual flourishing known as the Islamic Golden Age. Muslim scholars made discoveries in biology, geology, astronomy and mathematics. By contrast, Europe was an intellectual backwater.
That changed with Gutenberg’s development of movable type printing. The letters of the Latin alphabet have very simple block-like shapes, which made it relatively simple to turn them into type pieces. When printers tried to use movable type to print Arabic texts, they found themselves hampered by the cursive nature of Arabic writing. The success of movable type printing in Europe led to a thousand-fold increase in the availability of information, which produced an explosion of ideas that led directly to the European Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution that followed.
Series: The Secret History of Writing

The Social Dilemma

   2020    Technology
Set in the dark underbelly of Silicon Valley, The Social Dilemma fuses investigative documentary with enlightening narrative drama. Expert testimony from tech whistle-blowers exposes our disturbing predicament: the services Big Tech provides-search engines, networks, instant information, etc.-are merely the candy that lures us to bite. Once we're hooked and coming back for more, the real commodity they sell is their prowess to influence and manipulate us.

The Plot Against the President

   2020    Culture
The true story of how Congressman Devin Nunes uncovered the operation to bring down the President of the United States. Following the book 'The Plot Against the President' by investigative journalist Lee Smith, this feature length documentary explores new information and additional interviews as the case unfolds. Most of the world knows about Russiagate, but most American people would not be able to explain exactly what happened, and why it was the biggest political scandal in US history. This film will be a guide, and a basis for which people will understand the events related to this case as they continue to unfold every day.

The Saqqara Tomb

   2020    History
Join a team of local archaeologists as they excavate never before explored passageways, shafts, and tombs, while piecing together the secrets of one of the most jaw-dropping, exciting, and important Ancient Egyptian discoveries in decades. News of the tomb discovery has gone around the world and it has been heralded as the most significant find in almost fifty years.
The condition of the tomb is remarkable - but the real excitement lies in what is to come. The archaeologists hope they are going to unearth the possessions, grave goods, and mummies of the high-priest and his family - and with that information hoping to transform our understanding of this period of Old Kingdom history.

Is the Universe a Hologram

   2019    Science    HD
Shocking new evidence has convinced some of the world's greatest physicists that the universe is a hologram. Using cutting-edge technology, they investigate the secrets of black holes and space-time to build the case for this game-changing discovery.
The holographic principle is a supposed property of quantum gravity that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary to the region like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind.
The holographic principle was inspired by black hole thermodynamics, which conjectures that the maximal entropy in any region scales with the radius squared, and not cubed as might be expected. In the case of a black hole, the insight was that the informational content of all the objects that have fallen into the hole might be entirely contained in surface fluctuations of the event horizon.
Series: Space Deepest Secrets

Touching the Sun

   2019    Science    HD
For all of human history, the Sun, our home star, has measured our days and our seasons while fueling all life on Earth. Yet it remains an enigma. NASA's Parker Probe Plus is on a mission to change that, flying through dangerous radiation to become the closest spaceship to orbit our Sun.
It's a journey to the center of our solar system, a mission to gather information about the most critical celestial body in the sky, our star.
Series: Breakthrough
Clarkson Farm

Clarkson Farm

2021  Nature
Animal

Animal

2021  Nature
The Mind Explained

The Mind Explained

2019  Medicine
Seven Ages of Rock

Seven Ages of Rock

2007  Art
Top Gear

Top Gear

2012  Technology
Leaving Neverland

Leaving Neverland

2019  Culture
Reel Rock

Reel Rock

2014  Culture