´óÏó´«Ã½

Archives for February 2010

The Virtual Revolution episode 4 - Homo Interneticus?

Post categories: ,Ìý,Ìý

Dan Gluckman - Product Lead | 15:35 UK time, Friday, 19 February 2010

So far in The Virtual Revolution, we've looked at the impact of the web on power, international politics, and business. Now, in the final episode of the series, we're focussing on us. Is the web, with its instant connections and access to information, having an impact on our relationships and possibly even the way we think?

'Generation Web'Ìý - the generation who have grown up knowing only a wired world - will enter adulthood having spent 10,000 hours online. On the programme you'll see neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield, expressing concerns that the impact on their brains has been underestimated - a point she made back when production launched. But author Charles Leadbeater, who has advised the government about the web's impact on economics and education, thinks that such fears are the expression of an age-old problem - one generation finding it hard to comprehend what the next is doing.Ìý "I think a lot of this is a kind of middle class, middle aged panic about the web", he says. "They are panicked by the future [and] panicked by what they think their children are doing."

There are plenty of anecdotes - but surprisingly little hard evidence on this subject. Which is why in the making of The Virtual Revolution, we were so keen to join forces with Professor David Nicolas, head of the CIBER research group at University College London.

Today we've launched the Web Behaviour Test, devised with Professor Nicholas and with Professor Clifford Nass of Stanford University (who investigates multitasking behaviour). We've identified eight web 'species' that have evolved over the past twenty years. Taking the test will tell you what sort of web animal you are, and help contribute to an experiment which should show if people who use the web a lot, think differently from people who don't.

The experiment will run for several months, and the results will be reported back in the summer of 2010. But during the filming of The Virtual Revolution, we ran a small scale trial. Just over one hundred people of different ages and genders took the test - some who use the web rarely, others who use it all the time. The results were suggestive. Generation Web answered their questions after looking at half the number of web pages and only spending one sixth of the time viewing the information than their elders did.

Hopefully our full experiment will find out more.

So what do you think? Are you worried about the impact of the web on your relationships, identity and even the way you think? Or do you agree with Charles Leadbeater, that this is just an ill-informed moral panic? Let us know in the comments below.

Virtual Revolution episode three - The Cost of Free

Post categories: ,Ìý,Ìý,Ìý,Ìý

Dan Biddle Dan Biddle | 16:23 UK time, Friday, 12 February 2010

The third episode of Virtual Revolution is called The Cost of Free - and it's not as oxymoronic as you think. The Cost of Free examines the trades made online by users of the web as they share their thoughts, their preferences, their curiosities and their desires with the many , services and media which appear to be delivering information online for free.

Jo Wade, Assistant Producer for programme three, highlights these issues in her today:

'Every day in Britain millions of searches are carried out on Google for free. Every month we spend millions of hours on Facebook for free and read millions of articles from free newspapers.

But now look at it the other way round.

Every day Google gathers millions of search terms that help them refine their search system and give them a direct marketing bonanza that they keep for months.

Every week Facebook receives millions of highly personal status updates that are kept forever and are forming the basis of direct advertising revenue.

Every month free newspapers plant and track a cookie tracking device on your computer that tells them what your range of interests are and allows them to shape their adverts and in the future, even content around you.

So you're not just being watched, you're being traded. The currency has changed.'

Presenter Aleks Krotoski, offered her thoughts on the cost of the e-ticket on our blog early in the production process; on the show she discusses the potential price we may be paying for free with web practitioners and experts such as , (founder of ), , , and many more. You can watch, embed, download longer rushes clips of those interviews on our site.

So what does this mean forÌýprivacy? How much do you know about the deals you may be making with your data? Enjoy the programme and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Virtual Revolution episode two - Enemy of the State?

Post categories: ,Ìý,Ìý,Ìý,Ìý,Ìý,Ìý,Ìý

Dan Biddle Dan Biddle | 21:00 UK time, Saturday, 6 February 2010

Virtual Revolution Episode Two - Enemy of the State? will transmit on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two - Saturday 6 February 2010.

Most of the content produced during the open source production process: blogs, rushes, research links, can be found through the main episode page for programme two: Enemy of the State?.

1 - Twitter challenges Iran, Tehran, June 2009

During the production Aleks Krotoski blogged about the challenges the web posed to the traditional notions of the nation state, and you can watch the rushes of our interview with Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams.


Building around the argument of the web's challenge to governments is Bill Thompson, who spoke eloquently of the web's potential at the Web at 20 launch event in July 2009:


Worth noting is that Andrew Keen strongly disagrees with such ideas.

2 - The internet and its history with (D)Arpanet - we have more rushes of the father of the internet, Vint Cerf, speaking to Virtual Revolution; we also spent some time trying to track down .

The visit to the main .com servers at VeriSign might pique your interest in a story/urban legend we found ourselves intrigued by during the production - that of the mysterious 14th Server.

Re Wikileaks: we have rushes from Daniel Schmitt's interview available on our site. Further info of interest is that while by a US Court ruling (but opened again shortly afterwards), Wikileaks has recently succumbed to the pressures, not of law, but of finance, and .

Mitch Kapoor introducesÌýJohn Gilmour's famous quote that the - an interesting concept made famous as .

China and the web raises a number of fascinating issues in the series, and anyone wishing to delve deeper into the topic, the rushes interviews of Xiao Qiang (describing ) and Professor Ross AndersonÌý are essential viewing.

Ross Anderson's rushes also provide an excellent counterpoint to the matters discussed in President of Estonia's, Toomas Ilves' rushes clip, wherein he describes the .

That's just a few of the links we should have shared during the programme. All this info and much more debate around the series - including concepts which we were considering, but never actually made the final script (so dissuaded were we by the responses from users and other bloggers), such as the notion that eBay was an emerging eNation in its own right - all are available through our site.

So... Over to you. What do you think about the internet and web's threat or support to governments and nations?

3D Documentary Explorer - what do you think?

Post categories:

Dan Gluckman - Product Lead | 19:25 UK time, Friday, 5 February 2010

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit ´óÏó´«Ã½ Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.


The 3D Documentary Explorer is an experiment in interactive storytelling - a mix of video clips from the series, and web pages relevant to each clip, packaged into one experience.

We've cut the first two 60 minute episodes of The Virtual Revolution into a series of short chapters, so that the whole video experience is around 20 minutes for each episode. If you want, you can sit back and watch those straight through. But if the story we're telling sparks your curiosity and makes you want to sit forward and find out more, you can pause the video and use the web sites that we've identified around each chapter as a starting point for your own journey around the web. (Watch the video above for a 'how to' guide)

The Explorer is based on a concept first prototyped inside the ´óÏó´«Ã½ two years ago, but it is still version 1.0. So please do give it a test drive. Any feedback on your experience, suggestions for improvements, or thoughts about this approach to storytelling would be very welcome.

The Virtual Revolution - episode one

Post categories: ,Ìý

Dan Biddle Dan Biddle | 13:34 UK time, Monday, 1 February 2010

The wait is over. The Virtual Revolution aired on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two Saturday 30 January 2010, and can be watched on iPlayer for the next seven days (of which, more later!).

So what did you think?

We know this first episode in the series was generallyÌý around the weekend - search for or on Twitter for the most recent mentions.

No small amount of tweets came forth with the on the screen at the top of the programme:Ìý

ÌýReally? This documentary comes with a hashtag (#bbcrevolution) for you to tweet about the programme. Oh, I love the internet :)

#bbcrevolution Innovative and fun to see a hashtag used to co-ordinate twitter comment. Every TV show should have an onscreen hashtag :-)

This #bbcrevolution tag was debated / derided by some who argued that it was too long a tag for tweeting purposes - suggesting #vrev as an alternative; although this suggestion was made before the tag had appeared on the screen, and #vrev wasn't generally used thereafter.

Watching The Virtual Revolution on ´óÏó´«Ã½2 8.30pm with the longest official hashtag ever: #bbcrevolution ( #vrev ?)

It's true that #bbcrevolution is quite long, but even if we'd gone with #vrev it would have had to have been #bbcvrev (sorry, house rules) - saving 6 characters, yes, but hardly a beautiful, tongue-roller...!

Other matters arising - iPlayer and international audiences. During the show Ìýa response to a question on twitter to confirm that the series would be available internationally on iPlayer, however this was a wires-crossed moment, as we aren't able to make the programmes available in this way.

Find it ironic that Saturdays #bbcrevolution documentary promoting the open values of the Internet was only available in the UK on iPlayer

We recognise the international nature of this content and have endeavoured to make all of the video content on our website internationally available for viewing, embedding, download and re-use. We have certain constraints as a UK publicly-funded broadcaster, however this production has made unique efforts to make our content as universally accessible as possible.

Furthermore, everyone will be able to access considerable sections of the documentary series through our 3D Documentary Explorer (available after episode two), where you can watch the documentary in the context of the programme's research, interview rushes and surrounding information.

So these issues aside - what did you think?

I know there are issues arising from comments on other blog posts: our discussion of internet piracy on the programme has raised some argument; we'd love to hear more from you - please leave your comments below.

One final thought/plea: quite a few people wondered whether we had missed out key issues, ignored important, vital debates in this space... More than likely we may have, but for now, please hold off judgements or comments of this nature until the series has concluded. There's three more episodes; three more hours of considered information and analysis - it would seem most fair to reserve the debate on 'missing pieces' until we've seen the series as a whole. You can check out the forthcoming series themes here.

Many thanks to all who have watched and commented already. We look forward to hearing from you throughout the series!

´óÏó´«Ã½ iD

´óÏó´«Ã½ navigation

´óÏó´«Ã½ © 2014 The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.