Digital Nation: Premiers Next Tuesday on PBS

Douglas Rushkoff, a digital media guru and writer of Life Incorporated, a man you've all heard me rave about for quite some time now has a new documentary airing this upcoming Tuesday on PBS called Digital Nation!

I've included a preview of the documentary below, and let me say it looks fascinating! To give a short description: The documtary traverses the ever changing and relatively new landscape of the online, digital universe. They explore the way technology is shaping our lives in the 21st century, video game addiction, second life games where people meet in virtual worlds, the constant connectivity of email and social networking sites on the internet and a whole lot more!

The filmakers said they wanted to focus on the issues, and let you decide whether this new change in human culture is for the better or for the worse, and I have to say that I am on the fence about this one. At times I feel that the new networking technology of the internet using sites like Facebook bring us closer together as people, and at other times I feel they distract us from the simpler form of human life that existed only 10 or so years ago.

Rushkoff talks about how the technology that was onced used to seperate us, (putting televisions in every room and cutting off communication between family and friends) is now bringing us back together in ways that we could have never imagined even a decade ago. But where things get really interesting is pondering what the next decade will be like. If we couldn't imagine being where we are today just a few years ago, how can we possibly try to imagine what even the near term future will look like for us, especially as exponential growth rate of technology keeps our knowledge and information expanding at an ever faster rate, when measured in linear terms.

At this point I think the best way to look at it, is with a smile. Let's just hope that the technology really is re-connecting us and making life simpler, because at this point in the American way of life, I really think that things are fast enough. But don't take my word for it, check out the clip below, and let me know what you think:

This is a link to the PBS site of Digital Nation: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/


Until next time, I'll see you on the Interweb!

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