Computer World

There are very few people left on Earth for whom the world isn't shaped by computers or seen through their screens. But does it have to be this way? In this episode, we'll explore how screens — and the images they reveal — are just as much a manifestation of the world from which they come as they are the raw materials of a story about the next one: the future...

Links

• The IBM Portable PC 5155
• Blade Runner - Opening Scene
• Human Progress Landscape, the not-so-good student animation I made in 2003, but for which I still retain some fondness
• The machine I used to make it: the Sony VAIO Digital Studio
• Jony Ive's magical voice for Apple marketing
• you may have noticed some sound from the Tron Lightbike Scene
• The Matrix "What is Real?" scene
• keen listeners and sci-fi aficionados will have noticed sounds from the Nostromo boot sequence in Alien
• you may have also noticed some sound from The Lawnmower Man's disconnecting scene
• What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelly
• The last clip you heard came from WarGames - The WOPR introduction scene

Music

With the exception of a brief sample from a live performance of Kraftwerk in 1978, all music used in this episode was independently produced and shared with Design Tomorrow for non-commercial use by Able Parris of kamuter.

• Stratosfear, by kamuter
• Discovery, by kamuter
• the robots (live), by Kraftwerk
• Frequency, by kamuter
• Terraform, by kamuter
• Interrogation, by kamuter

Some of My Favorite Independent Media

• Robin Sloan is a writer and self-styled media inventor who constantly inspires me by independently producing short stories and "odd-shaped internet projects." His latest workspace is called Year of the Meteor, where he's writing a regular newsletter and producing some interesting zine-like media. Robin and his partner Kathryn Tomajan also independently produce California extra virgin olive oil under the label: Fat Gold
• Desert Oracle is a pocket-sized field guide (and radio show) to the fascinating American deserts: strange tales, singing sand dunes, sagebrush trails, artists and aliens, authors and oddballs, ghost town