manipulation

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explains how astroturf, fake grassroots campaigns funded by corporate or political interests, manipulates media messages. The TEDx talk is about 11 minutes.

A 1985 interview by G. Edward Griffin with former KGB operative Yuri Bezmenov. He describes long-running Soviet efforts at ideological subversion and manipulation of US public opinion.

A 12-minute demo of the Alternate Reality Kit, built by Randall Smith at Xerox PARC in 1986. It is a simulated physical world in which users manipulate objects and program by direct interaction.

A trader channel clips Jim Cramer describing market manipulation techniques hedge funds use. The clip is framed as context for odd short-term market moves.

Second half of a demonstration of the 1982 Xerox Star user interface. It shows how the Star differed from the later Lisa and Mac interfaces, with strengths in networking and printing and little direct manipulation.

A 2008 CES demo of the original Microsoft Surface, a smart table with multi-touch interaction. It shows touch manipulation of photos and objects on a tabletop display.

Part 1 of Smarter Every Day's three-part series on manipulating the YouTube algorithm. It features Renee DiResta and examples of how social media platforms can be manipulated.

A 1947 US military film that deconstructs how the Nazi regime used divisive propaganda and prejudice to split and control a population. It teaches viewers to recognise demagoguery tactics.

CGP Grey's video "Humans Need Not Apply" argues that automation will make a large part of the workforce economically obsolete, much as engines did for horses. It surveys robots and software replacing both physical and mental labor.

Alan Kay's tribute to Ted Nelson at the Intertwingled festival, presented using a revived Smalltalk-78 system running on emulated 1970s Xerox PARC hardware. It shows live, user-programmable software from that era.

Real Engineering explains how Zipline built a drone delivery network for medical supplies in Rwanda. It covers the fixed-wing drones, catapult launch, parachute drop and the logistics behind the service.

A TV show about Ivan Sutherland's 1963 MIT thesis software Sketchpad, which ran on the TX-2 computer. It shows a light pen drawing, constraints, snapping, scaling and object-style graphics, foundations of GUIs and CAD.

Posy gives a short history of the computer mouse cursor, from early straight pointers to the tilted arrow, comparing Apple and Windows designs. He then explains why he designed his own cursor set and offers it as a free download.

Ted Nelson demonstrates Xanadu Space, his software for representing hypertext in three-dimensional space with linked, referenced content fragments.

Symbolics developer Kalman Reti gives a short introductory demo of a Symbolics Lisp Machine running Genera in an emulator. It shows the context-aware command line, typed on-screen objects, and the live-editable system, including swapping in a C-compiled JPEG decoder.

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.

Slaughterbots is a fictional short film, backed by Stuart Russell, depicting swarms of cheap autonomous drones that use facial recognition to assassinate targets. It was made to argue for banning autonomous weapons.

Wendover Productions explains why drone delivery has not become the future once promised. It covers no-fly zones, costs and the difficulty of the final drop-off.

Bret Victor's talk proposing a new kind of maker space built for seeing and understanding a project's behavior: inside it, across time and across possibilities. It argues for scientific understanding over recipes and rules of thumb.

Slaughterbots is a short sci-fi film in which swarms of cheap autonomous drones are programmed to kill targets by profile. It was made as arms-control advocacy against autonomous weapons.

Ted Nelson explains the original Xanadu hypertext idea of visible connection, the notion that links between documents should be shown and preserved. He argues that the Web and current document standards lost this concept.

The first installment of a hobbyist's video diary documenting his build of a giant walking spider-like vehicle. The footage is casual and self-shot, following the early stages of the project.

Johnny Lee demonstrates head tracking with a Wii remote and a head-mounted pair of IR LEDs, so a screen acts like a window into a 3D scene as your head moves.

NASA's animated explanation of the Curiosity rover's Mars landing, which relied on a complex automated sequence taking about seven minutes. It features NASA engineers discussing the risks before the 2012 landing.

Novelist Daniel Suarez warns in a TED talk about autonomous robotic weapons and drones. He argues that taking the decision to kill out of human hands threatens democratic accountability and calls for a ban.

The opening episode of Ted Nelson's Computers for Cynics series, in which he casts doubt on conventional accounts of computer basics. He argues that conventions and packaging are mistaken for technology.

Avi Bryant demos Dabble DB, a web-based spreadsheet-like database for building apps without code. It shows how users can model and relate data through a smooth interface.

A 1991 NeXT promotional video that stages a head-to-head programming contest between a NeXT computer and a Sun workstation. It shows NeXT's interface builder and object-oriented tooling producing an application far faster than traditional UNIX development.

A 1990 Lotus sales demo of Improv, a spreadsheet built for the NeXT computer that rethought the grid with named categories and multiple views. The uploader, who tested it at Price Waterhouse, presents it as an early, innovative vision of the spreadsheet.

Mark Rober shows an automatic bullseye dartboard that tracks a thrown dart with motion capture and moves in real time so it always hits the center. He spent over three years on the project.

A short demo of Code Bubbles, an IDE interface built around editable code fragments in bubbles instead of files. It was a research prototype for Java development.

Johns Hopkins APL shows Les Baugh, a bilateral shoulder-level amputee, controlling two Modular Prosthetic Limbs by thought after a short training period. Nerves rerouted to his chest drive the arms.

This Place argues that the uncanny valley is a flawed concept, since 'human likeness' is too broad and the supporting evidence is cherry-picked. It proposes that the creepiness really comes from how animated characters and robots move.

A Wendover Productions documentary-style video on how Zipline delivers blood and medical supplies by drone in Rwanda. It covers the catapult launch, parachute drop and the logistics behind it.

A 1984 Computer Chronicles segment in which Susan Kare explains the ergonomics and interface design of the original Macintosh. She introduces the interface step by step for newcomers.

A short product demo of Dabble DB, a web tool for importing, entering and manipulating structured data with little effort. It was built in Smalltalk and later acquired by Twitter.

Rob Miles explains for Computerphile why simple rule sets like Asimov's Three Laws cannot make robots and AI safe. Terms like harm and human are too ambiguous to specify precisely.

Brian Douglas introduces Braitenberg vehicles, simple robots whose sensors are wired directly to motors yet show surprisingly lifelike behavior. He draws on Valentino Braitenberg's book Vehicles.

Disney Research presents Touche, a swept frequency capacitive sensing technique that recognizes complex hand and body configurations, and adds touch sensitivity to humans, liquids and everyday objects.

An 8-minute fictional short film, made by campaigners for a ban on autonomous weapons, depicting swarms of cheap AI-guided micro-drones used to kill targeted people. It ends with a call to action against autonomous weapons.