init systems

A feature-length Defunctland documentary on the history of Disney's FastPass and FastPass+ expedited queue systems. It covers how the systems evolved and how they were designed, with simulation of their effects on park lines.

The first episode of James Burke's Connections series, 'The Trigger Effect', explores how modern society depends on interlinked technological systems and how quickly it breaks down when they fail, starting with a power blackout.

NativLang's 47-minute animated documentary traces the birth and evolution of writing, from early cave marks to modern scripts. It presents the history of the world's writing systems as a story.

Jason Scott's multi-episode documentary on the bulletin board system scene of the 1980s and 1990s, built from over 200 interviews. It captures how hobbyists ran dial-up systems before the internet went mainstream.

The first episode of Stewart Brand's 1997 BBC series based on his book How Buildings Learn, covering how buildings change after they are built. Brand presents and the series has music by Brian Eno.

Fredrik Knudsen's 86-minute documentary on Terry A. Davis, creator of TempleOS, tracing his work, his schizophrenia and his decline. It is a chronological video essay built on his public posts and videos.

The first episode of Jason Scott's eight-part BBS documentary, covering the predecessors and beginnings of the dial-up bulletin board system. It includes interviews with pioneers such as Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who created the first dial-up BBS in 1978.

VICE's Oobah Butler spends eight months using fake reviews to push a nonexistent restaurant, The Shed at Dulwich, to number one on TripAdvisor in London. The short documentary shows how easily review systems can be gamed.

A documentary on the 1972 Club of Rome study Limits to Growth, which questioned the pursuit of endless economic growth. It covers the study's findings and whether anyone acted on them.

First part of a six-part recording of the 1973 Lighthill debate on AI, where Sir James Lighthill's critical report on AI research was contested by figures including McCarthy and Michie.

A tour of Christian Schallert's 24 square meter apartment in Barcelona, designed so that it looks like an empty cube until he builds the furniture he needs. Kirsten Dirksen shows how the space is transformed for cooking, sleeping and dressing.

An hour-long, carefully sourced video essay from Ahoy asking what counts as a video game and which one was truly first. It examines Tennis for Two, Spacewar, Pong, the Brown Box and a 1947 CRT device.

Derren Brown's TV special in which he convinces a person he has a system for predicting horse race winners, demonstrating how survivorship bias and selective outcomes can fake predictive powers.

An independent feature documentary in which 23 economists, advisers and financiers discuss how the financial system works and what a more just economic model might look like. It covers money creation, debt and the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Dan Olson's 76-minute essay on flat earth belief, built around a hike to a lake to test earth's curvature. It examines the community, how YouTube promoted it, and how it connects to wider conspiracy thinking and QAnon.

The first episode of James Burke's 1978 BBC series Connections traces modern dependence on complex technological networks, starting with the 1965 New York blackout, and moves through ancient agriculture to Kuwait's oil-driven leap.

Tantacrul's 76-minute deep dive into the history of western music notation and the many proposed replacements, such as piano rolls, colored notes and the jubilate. He explains why none have displaced the current system.

Barely Sociable presents a case that Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is cryptographer Adam Back. It uses interview clips and circumstantial evidence, and also touches on the block size dispute.

hbomberguy's long video dissects the anti-vaccine movement, analyzing Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent MMR-autism study, the media's role and Wakefield's loss of his license. It combines detailed research with humor.

A Dartmouth-produced documentary on how professors John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz, with a group of undergraduates, invented the BASIC language. It covers the creation of BASIC and the early time-sharing environment at Dartmouth.

CNBC gets a tour of ASML's cleanrooms in the Netherlands to see how its roughly $200 million EUV lithography machines are built. It covers exploding molten tin, ultra-flat optics and why only one company can make these systems.

Kirsten Dirksen tours new Earthships, homes built from tires, bottles and cans that generate their own energy, collect water and grow food. The video covers the newer, cheaper Encounter model and its passive systems.

A tour of the historic WLW transmitter facility in Mason, Ohio, recorded at Hamvention 2013. It shows the surviving equipment from the 500,000 watt AM era, when WLW was the only US station at that power, and explains the history.

A documentary on how Cornwall became a hub for the world's communications, from the first transatlantic radio signal to modern undersea fibre cables. It describes how cable landing stations and the systems are put together.

Part 4 of the BBS: The Documentary series, covering FidoNet, the amateur network that linked dial-up bulletin board systems together to relay messages and files worldwide.

A VPRO documentary on quantitative analysts who designed the mathematical models and high-speed trading systems behind modern finance. It features figures such as Paul Wilmott and asks what risks come from treating markets as a machine.

A VICE documentary profiling Wim Hof, the Iceman, covering his feats of cold endurance, his breathing and meditation method, and scientific studies of his control over his autonomic and immune systems.

Veritasium tells the story of the XZ backdoor, how a patient attacker became maintainer and nearly compromised SSH on Linux systems. It also covers free software history and how encryption in SSH works.

Fully Charged host Robert Llewellyn visits Orkney, where wind, tidal, wave and solar generation plus community energy schemes power the islands. It presents the archipelago as a model for future energy systems.