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James Burke’s Connections: A BBC History of Innovation (brainpickings.org)

82 points by moondowner ↗ HN
The entire Connections series ('sesason' 1, 2 & 3), produced by the BBC, are available for viewing via Youtube (links at the linked page).<p>"True to the program’s subtitle, An Alternative View of Change, Burke debunks the myth of historical progress as a linear force and instead explores the interplay and interconnectedness of events and motives as the origin of modernity’s gestalt."<p>For more info visit this page also: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/james-burke-connections/<p>Though the series are old, people highly recommend them (I haven't watched them but will do now).

24 comments

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jdub
This is an extraordinary series. Watch the entire first season, and once you get to the last episode -- especially if you have an ounce of FLOSS in your bones -- I dare you not to stand on the couch yelling, "He knew it! He knew it! In NINETEEN SEVENTY NINE!"
Create
It was in the air (zeitgeist). Think Unix before the AT&T lawyers (copyleft and BSD license hacks). And the Apollo launchpad starting scene says it all... (think STS)
spot
There was a book version of these that I read and loved. Looking forward to getting more like this.
blatherard
I got the companion book as a Christmas present when I was ten or eleven, and only ever saw the television series much later. It's a really great combination of science and history, perfect for the young and nerdy, something that I'll probably give my son once he's old enough (assuming I can find a copy).
sp332
He used to have a back-page article in Scientific American too, which were also very fun :-)
cowmixtoo
"The Day the Universe Changed" is online too!

Awesome.

CallMeV
Agreed. I became hooked on these series. James Burke made the future seem so incredibly optimistic - "Just think of what we can do tomorrow!"

And now we are here, and it is the tomorrow of which he spoke, and yes, just look at what we are doing!

So what else can we do for our tomorrows?

pg
I watched this series as a kid. At the time I thought it was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen.
mmastrac
My first introduction to this was Connections^2 in the 90's (back when TLC was "The Learning Channel"). It blew my mind then. They showed the original series to us in our engineering classes later on, using his book as the text for the course.

This is a fantastic series for entrepreneurs to both watch and understand. None of the big ideas are borne from the vacuum - they all stand on the shoulders of ideas from others before.

jdp23
James Burke does a great job of contrasting holistic and reductionist thinking. At a Microsoft offsite a few years ago he was a guest speaker, and talked about the importance of exposing yourself to different kinds of thinking and different specialization rather than being narrowly focused all of the time on specific tasks. Afterwards I ran into him by the elevator and asked whether he saw this as part of the value of Google's 20% time. He said yes, very much so, although he hadn't wanted to make a big deal of it for the Microsoft audience.

Of course he also points out that reductionist thinking has values despite it's limitations. "It did, after all, give us the scientific revolution." Indeed.

julianz
Oh, you win the internets. I loved this series when I was a kid and never got to see quite enough of it. I went looking for it a couple of years ago without success. This is great!
motters
This is one of those in-depth series which the BBC no longer seems to make. Burke pretty much dispels the notion of the lone genius inventor and shows how many technologies and ideas are linked as a historical process - sometimes in surprising ways.