knowledge work

Cloth Map documents Havana's SNET, a community-built private network that Cubans created because internet prices were high. It is used for gaming and sharing.

Part one of a 1996 BBC Modern Times documentary on the training to become a London black cab driver. It follows candidates learning the Knowledge and facing stressful repeated exams with Public Carriage Office examiners.

Machine Thinking tells the story of the Cold War Heavy Press Program, the giant forging presses that make parts for aircraft, missiles and turbines.

Tim Hunkin's 1987 TV series episode on how vacuum cleaners and related household machines work, remastered and upscaled in 2021. It is part of the six-episode 'Secret Life of Machines' series with hands-on demonstrations of everyday technology.

Part 1 of an episode of the British educational TV series The Secret Life of Machines, about how vacuum cleaners work and their history. It mixes humor with explanation of household technology.

The first part of a four-part Channel 4 (UK) documentary series presented by Howard Goodall, this episode covers melody and why tunes affect us so deeply. It explains how melody works in Western music with historical background and music theory.

People Make Games interviewed 16 current and former Valve employees to examine how the company's no-bosses, no-titles structure works in practice, and where it falls short.

An episode of Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines that explains how a washing machine works, using models, cut-aways and animations. It was first aired in 1988.

BBC Earth shows killer whales working as a pod to create waves that wash seals off ice floes, with the producer explaining how the crew captured behavior once thought a myth.

A condensed film of Dick Proenneke's footage of building a cabin and living alone in the Alaskan wilderness, using hand tools and local materials. It draws on the 8mm films he shot himself.

BobbyBroccoli documentary on the rise of Nortel Networks, once the dominant Canadian telecom giant, during the dot-com era. It is part one of a two-part story.

A day-in-the-life video following a move between apartments in Tokyo using a Japanese moving company. It shows how the movers work and what the experience is like.

Kirby Ferguson's updated four-part video essay arguing that creativity is built on copying, transforming and combining existing work. It covers examples from film, music and technology and touches on generative AI.

A short film following Moroccan artisans from Fez as they build a traditional 15th-century-style Moroccan court inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It shows zellij tilework and other traditional techniques.

A 1936 Chevrolet promotional drama, 'Master Hands', showing car manufacturing from foundry to finished vehicle in Flint, Michigan. It is a National Film Registry selection and a record of early mass production.

The official trailer for The True Cost, a documentary on the fast fashion industry and who pays for cheap clothing. It touches on garment worker conditions and the Rana Plaza collapse.

A short documentary clip of Japanese railway workers and Toyota staff using pointing-and-calling, a safety practice of physically pointing at and naming things while working. It includes examples from several railway companies.

A short tour of a UK materials recycling facility showing how mixed recyclables are mechanically and optically sorted. Aluminum, ferrous metal, glass, paper, and trash come out as separate streams.

Tod's Workshop fires full-weight medieval arrows from a 160lb English warbow at reproduced medieval armour. Armour curator Dr Tobias Capwell, an archer and bowyer give historical context and discuss the results.

Code Rush is a 2000 PBS documentary following Netscape engineers during the year they open-sourced the browser as Mozilla. It shows the pressure and long hours of work in Silicon Valley at the height of the dot-com era.

NASA JPL engineers explain the final minutes of the Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing on Mars, which combined aerobraking, a parachute and a skycrane. It lays out the tight sequence of events that all had to work automatically.

Rob Scallon explores a five-story pipe organ, the largest in the Midwest, with organist John Sherer. The half-hour tour covers most of the instrument and how it works.

A one-hour documentary on XBAND, the 1994 modem network for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. It covers matchmaking, chat, email, leaderboards and how games were patched at runtime to cope with lag.

Remastered episode of Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines about the radio, covering its development including Hertz and Marconi experiments and Armstrong's FM radio in animated form.

A 41-minute factory tour showing how the BMW i3 electric car is built from start to finish, in the style of a Megafactories documentary. It shows a highly automated production line with carbon-fiber body construction and robots doing most of the work.

Motherboard's 2014 visit to a secretive Bitcoin mining operation in a repurposed factory in Liaoning, China, one of six sites producing about 4,050 bitcoins a month. It shows the machines and the workers' living conditions.

A US Air Force film on the Heavy Press Program, which built some of the world's largest metal forging and extrusion presses for aircraft, starting from German presses taken after WWII.

Code Rush is a one-hour documentary following Netscape engineers in Silicon Valley through the company's last year as an independent firm. It covers the Mozilla open-source announcement, the frantic push to ready the source for release by March 31, 1998, and the toll on engineers' lives before the AOL acquisition.

Geoff Lawton documents a permaculture project that turned barren Jordanian desert into green, productive land. It covers the techniques he used.

The first episode of Milton Friedman's 1980 Free To Choose series, on how markets and voluntary exchange organize economic activity and the price system. It includes visits to Hong Kong, the U.S. and Scotland and a panel discussion with critics.

Joe Kava, VP of Google's Data Center Operations, gives a short tour of a Google data center. He covers security, sustainability and the core infrastructure architecture.

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.

Feature-length documentary following DeepMind's AlphaGo program as it prepares for and plays the 2016 match against Go champion Lee Sedol. It covers the team, the games, and the emotional reaction of the Go world to an AI beating a top human.

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

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.

Kirby Ferguson's video essay series arguing that creativity is built on copying, transforming and combining existing work. It covers music, film and technology, then turns to copyright and patents.

Dan Olson's roughly two-hour video essay critiques NFTs, cryptocurrency, and Web3, covering their technical, economic, and ideological flaws. It is heavily sourced and ends with the advice to ask whether a project needs crypto to work.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day tries to manufacture a grill scrubber entirely in the United States. Along the way he runs into missing supply chains, tooling and institutional manufacturing knowledge.

The first part of a long series documenting Dave Bull's Tokyo woodblock workshop as it produces a reproduction of Hokusai's The Great Wave. It follows the carving, proofing and printing of the reward print for Kickstarter backers.

A New York Times Opinion documentary tracing Soviet and KGB disinformation, from the 1980s AIDS origin hoax to modern campaigns like Pizzagate. It features former KGB officers and the people who tried to counter the lies.