Transformative TV Series: 'Connections' and 'The Day The Universe Changed'

When I was growing up, I came across a British program on my PBS station that had this odd guy talking about science and inventions. There was something about the host and the style of the program that immediately pulled me in. After watching (and re-watching) the series, my view of how things are created or discovered was permanently transformed. The host was science historian, James Burke.

From Wikipedia:

Connections explores an "Alternative View of Change" (the subtitle of the series) that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress. Burke contends that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the entire gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting for reasons of their own (e.g, profit, curiosity, religious) motivations with no concept of the final, modern result of what either their or their contemporaries' actions finally lead to. The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drives history and innovation, and is also the main focus of the series and its sequels.

Burke also challenged the viewer to the possible practical and ethical impliations of these changes, "the downside of an interconnected history:"

If history progresses because of the synergistic interaction of past events and innovations, then as history does progress, the number of these events and innovations increases. This increase in possible connections causes the process of innovation to not only continue, but to accelerate. Burke poses the question of what happens when this rate of innovation, or more importantly change itself, becomes too much for the average person to handle and what this means for individual power, liberty, and privacy.

Lastly, if the entire modern world is built from these interconnected innovations, all increasingly maintained and improved by specialists who required years of training to gain their expertise, what chance does the average citizen without this extensive training have in making an informed decision on practical technological issues, such as the building of nuclear power plants...? Furthermore, if the modern world is increasingly interconnected, what happens when one of those nodes collapses? Does the entire system follow suit?

Following the Connections series was another great one titled The Day the Universe Changed. This series was similar to the first, but it focused on the paradigm shifts of individuals as a result of changes in science and technology. Some discoveries were so significant that they radically altered people's perception of the world. For example, the invention of the printing press or proof that the earth revolved around the sun.

These programs were also significant to me in another way. I discovered that film and television could be used for transforming one's view -- as it did mine.

Learn more:

• Wikipedia entries on Connections and The Day the Universe Changed
• James Burke's current project: Knowledge Web