Breakthrough: The Ideas That Changed the World
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From text to tweet: communication trends in the 21st century
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Technological changes in the last decade have forever changed the way human beings communicate with each other. We are more connected, yet more isolated. We have virtually unlimited access to information; yet view that information with suspicion and hesitation. We willing offer details of our lives in digital form; yet deal with issues of privacy on a daily basis. Communication in the 21st century is a complicated blend of opportunity and anxiety that deserves the scrutiny of a critical perspective--Cover.
Guns, germs, and steel
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An epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer this question. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? Diamond dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns.
In the shadow of the Moon: remember when the whole world looked up
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Between 1968 and 1972, the world watched in awe each time an American spacecraft voyaged to the Moon. Only 12 American men have walked upon its surface and they remain the only human beings to have stood on another world. Now for the first time, a combination of archival material from the original NASA film footage, much of it never before seen and interviews with the surviving astronauts tells the story of the Apollo space program.
Tesla: American Experience
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Meet Nikola Tesla, the genius engineer and tireless inventor whose technology revolutionized the electrical age of the 20th century. Although eclipsed in fame by Edison and Marconi, it was Tesla's vision that paved the way for today's wireless world.
Tesla: Master of Lightning
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Recount the life of scientist, inventor, and visionary Nikola Tesla, often remembered as more of an eccentric cult figure than an electrical engineering genius. Tesla's surprising inventions are revealed in his autobiographical and scientific writings.
Who killed the electric car?
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Investigates the development and demise of the fuel-efficient, environment-friendly electric car. Examines the Bush administration's role in the car's being peremptory pulled from production, the influence of the automobile industry and oil interests, and implications for the future of sustainable energy in the United States.
Brooklyn Bridge
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"This award-winning program by filmmaker Ken Burns recaptures all the drama, the struggles and the personal tragedies behind this greatest of all achievements of America's industrial age. As this fascinating program reveals, it was the largest bridge of its era, marked by enormous construction problems and ingenious solutions
Build Green
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In a refreshing hour, Build Green shows how by taking advantage of the sun, the wind, and the rain, as well as dirt, straw and waste, homeowners and developers can reduce their personal contribution to climate change by building structures that are healthier for the occupants, economical to run, and even fun to live in. Canada's best architects show us round their latest green projects. From retrofitting an aging Montreal housing complex with state-of-the-art sustainable energy systems, to laying up hay for strawbale houses, to building transportable "mini-homes" with their own small power plant, Build Green takes a close look at the materials and technologies we'd be foolish not to adopt as standard practice in construction.
Sewers
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Examines the network of underground pipes and tunnels that carry human waste (and more) away. From ancient Rome's pristine sewage-conveying systems, through the foul, out-the-window system of Europe in the Middle Ages, to the revolutionary sanitation engineering of the 19th and 20th centuries, SEWERS flows through history. Study waste management's evolution from the sewers of Paris, Boston, and Los Angeles. Meet a sewer diver (and his robotic counterpart) who inspects and ensures the efficient operation of the conduits.
Gasland
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Filmmaker Josh Fox travels the United States along the Marcellus Shale formation to uncover the negative environmental and health effects of fracture drilling as a means of extracting natural gas.
The Mine Wars (American Experience)
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At the beginning of the 20th century, coal was the engine of American industrial progress. Nearly three quarters of a million men across the country spent ten or twelve hours a day underground in coal mines. The Mine Wars brings to life the struggle that turned the coalfields of southern West Virginia into a blood-soaked war zone where basic constitutional rights and freedoms were violently contested.
Renewable Energy
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Explains how air, water, earth, and fire are transformed into clean, reliable sources of heat, electricity, and even automobile fuel. Looks at a solar roof implementation by FedEx at a regional sort facility in Oakland, Calif., a wind power project in central New York using fewer, larger turbines, and the widespread use of geothermal energy in Iceland. Visits Lovecraft Biofuels in Los Angeles, an auto repair shop that converts diesel car and truck engines to run on one hundred percent vegetable oil. Examines the potential use of hydropower from ocean tides, such as tidal barrages, as well as a tidal stream (or flow) power project off the shore of England that uses propeller-like turbines to capture the kinetic power of underwater currents.
Cyberwar Threat (NOVA)
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Thanks in part to the documents released by Edward Snowden, the true scale of the National Security Agency's scope and power is coming to light. Besides spending billions to ingest and analyze the worlds' electronic communications, the NSA has set out to dominate a new battlefield, cyberspace. Nova examines the science and technology behind cyber warfare and asks if we are already in the midst of a deadly new arms race.
Google: behind the screen
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To organize the world's information--that appears to be Google's aim. What does such a goal involve, exactly? What are the implications for academia and creative people? For business, the media, and society at large? This program seeks answers to those questions by going behind the scenes at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, as well as the company's London offices. A conversation with Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and Google's "Chief Internet Evangelist," sheds light on search engine innovations and Google's role in advancing them. Interviews with company vice president Marissa Meyer and other key players explore the inner workings of the Information Age giant.
Thinking machines: the creation of the computer
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Traces the history of the computer from Charles Babbage's Victorian counting machine to the desktop models of the 1990s.
Web Junkie
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A documentary on a program in China in which youth between the ages of thirteen and eighteen are treated in a boot camp-type environment for Internet addiction, a problem professed by the Chinese government to be the number one public health threat to young people.
The gene doctors
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"Every year, over a million babies are born worldwide with a hereditary disease; most are serious, and many are fatal. For most of the history of medicine, doctors could only treat symptoms. Now an elite cadre of pioneers, gene doctors, is starting to target root causes. Through intimate stories of families whose lives are being transformed, the film takes viewers to the frontlines of a medical revolution"