tech bubble

The first part of Extra History's animated miniseries on the South Sea Bubble. It explains how England's government debt led Robert Harley to turn to financier John Blunt, whose schemes began inflating artificial demand for shares.

Neil Postman's 1997 lecture at College of DuPage, based on his book, argues that Americans treat technology as a national religion and depend on it to solve larger human problems. It includes audience questions.

Adam Tornhill's GOTO Copenhagen 2019 talk on how to prioritize technical debt in large codebases. It argues for combining code complexity with change frequency (hotspots) from version control data, rather than trying to quantify debt in the abstract.

A Primitive Technology episode in which the creator builds a bow-drill-driven bark fan to blow air into a fire, using only natural materials. It shows the progression from fanning a fire by hand to a rotary forge blower.

In this American Masters clip, Jacques Pepin shows two different techniques for making a perfect omelet, a dish he is famous for teaching America.

A recording of Richard Feynman's talk on the possibilities of manipulating matter at very small scales, widely seen as an early vision of nanotechnology. This is a later version of his 1959 "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" lecture.

ADVChina tours Chinese ghost cities and discusses the housing bubble, with speculative buyers purchasing empty apartments as investments.

Technology Connections explains how LED traffic lights, which do not melt snow, drew complaints and were blamed for accidents. He uses it to illustrate the 'but sometimes' fallacy against new technology.

The Primitive Technology channel shows the construction of a tiled roof hut in the bush using only primitive tools and materials made in earlier videos. It includes tiles, a kiln, clay walls and underfloor heating.

Primitive Technology shows building a cord drill from scratch and then upgrading it to a pump drill, using only primitive materials like a stone flywheel and cord.

The Primitive Technology channel shows the making of a stone axe (celt) using only primitive tools and materials, from shaping and polishing a basalt head to making the wooden handle and hafting it.

Linus Tech Tips addresses criticism of its clickbait-style thumbnails in an Honest Answers episode, explaining that the YouTube algorithm pushes creators toward them.

A 2012 debate between Peter Thiel and George Gilder on whether technological progress and economic growth are accelerating or decelerating, moderated by William Davidow.

An SNL sketch in which Nick Burns, the condescending IT guy, trains a new tech support hire to mock users over simple computer problems.

The Futurama clip where Hermes is told he is technically correct, the best kind of correct. It comes from season 2, episode 14.

Bryan Cantrill's Monktoberfest 2017 talk on leadership and organizational principles, ranging from the Gettysburg Address to Uber and Amazon. He argues for the difference between principles and values and criticizes vague corporate principles.

Westwood Studios co-founder Louis Castle talks about how pathfinding was solved in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, in an Ars Technica War Stories episode. It also touches on other challenges in Westwood's RTS games.

A demo of writing technical documents in Emacs Org mode using org-babel, so that code blocks and generated content stay consistent when things change. The author shares the demo files and his dotfiles.

The earliest filmed version of the Turbo Encabulator technical-jargon parody, shot in the late 1970s with narrator Bud Haggert. It deadpans a stream of meaningless engineering language.

A clip of Louis CK on Conan riffing that everything is amazing and nobody is happy, about people complaining over airplane wifi and taking modern technology for granted.

James Hoffmann demonstrates his technique for a clean, sludge-free cup from a French press: stir, break the crust, wait, and carefully pour. It is a four-minute guide.

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.

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.

A 2012 Harvard Institute of Politics conversation between Peter Thiel and historian Niall Ferguson. Thiel discusses technology, politics and his stagnation hypothesis.

Eli Pariser's TED talk argues that personalized web services trap users in filter bubbles, limiting exposure to challenging information. He says this is bad for individuals and for democracy.

The earliest existing concert video of Kraftwerk, from a 1970 performance shortly after the band formed. It shows the band in its original setup and the audience's reactions.

The official music video for Autechre's 'Gantz Graf', a dense, glitchy electronic track paired with abstract animated 3D visuals reportedly made by hand in 2002.

The 1972 documentary based on Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock, narrated by Orson Welles. It is a dystopian look at the accelerating pace of technological change and its psychological toll.

Veritasium argues that every new technology, from motion pictures to TV, was predicted to revolutionize education and none did. It asks what actually could, drawing on the host's physics education research.

A Louis C.K. appearance on Conan in which he argues that everything is amazing and nobody is happy, riffing on how quickly people take modern technology for granted.

A short clip of Louis C.K.'s Conan interview riff 'Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy', about how people take modern technology for granted and complain about marvels.

A one-minute clip from the 1995 film Hackers in which characters trade technobabble about RISC architecture changing everything.

Christian Schafmeister's Google Tech Talk on designing spiroligomer molecules and building Clasp, a Common Lisp on LLVM that interoperates with C++, to program molecular design. It covers the chemistry, automatic differentiation for force fields, and how the compiler is built.

An Ars Technica War Stories episode in which Richard Garriott and Starr Long describe Ultima Online's planned virtual ecology and how players wrecked it. Players slaughtered the animals and also broke the in-game economy.

Techmoan demonstrates the Tefifon, a vintage German audio player that combines elements of record and tape with a grooved elastic loop. He shows how it works and plays it.

Lucas Pope, creator of Return of the Obra Dinn, explains in Ars Technica's War Stories how localizing the game's logbook nearly sank the project.

Google engineers describe Google's internal build system, a unified, language-agnostic system used across the company. It was presented as a 2012 NYC tech talk.

A Google Tech Talk by Raymond Blum on how Google backs up massive amounts of data such as Gmail and Picasa. It covers scaling challenges, failure types, and approaches that did not work, including tape.

Jacques Pepin makes a classic French omelette in a short uncut demonstration. The video contrasts it with the American style.

Tanya Reilly's LeadDev talk on glue work, the invisible coordination and support tasks engineers do that keep teams successful but can hurt careers.