Films and Audio
21st Century Enlightenment
In this animation film, Matthew Taylor explores the meaning of the idea '21st Century Enlightenment'. How might this idea might help us meet the challenges the world faces today, and what role can be played by organisations such as the RSA? Whereas 18th Century Enlightenment was moved by an utopia of a perfect organisation of the knowledge collective enterprise -alike Baco's New Atlantis-, a current Enlightenment should need a different utopia.
The RSA is a 258 year-old charity dedicated to driving social progress and spreading world-changing ideas.
Biography of Paul Otlet
A documentary about Paul Otlet, often considered the father of information management, narrated by W. Boyd Rayward, his biographer (produced for Dutch television in 1998).
In the late 1800s and early 1900s Otlet pioneered the field of what we today call information science, but what he called documentation. A hundred years before the development of the Internet, Otlet used terms like web of knowledge, link, and knowledge network to describe his vision for a central repository of all human knowledge.
The Information Machine (1958)
Cartoon tracing the history of storing and analyzing information from the days of the cavemen to today's age of electronic brains.
The Power of Networks
In this new RSA Animate, Manuel Lima explores the idea of network and rizomatic structure as developed by Deleuze and others in opposition to the idea of three-like organisation. Whereas the classical organisation of knowledge is rooted in a three-like structure, the current technical development enables another approach closer to network organisation we can find all over nature.
The Internet in Society
Empowering or Censoring Citizens?
Does the internet actually inhibit, rather than encourage democracy? In this Animate adapted from a talk given in 2009, Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' - the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.
The RSA is a 258 year-old charity dedicated to driving social progress and spreading world-changing ideas.
Manufacturing Consent
Funny, provocative and surprisingly accessible, MANUFACTURING CONSENT explores the political life and ideas of world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist Noam Chomsky. Through a dynamic collage of biography, archival gems, imaginative graphics and outrageous illustrations, Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick's award-winning documentary highlights Chomsky's probing analysis of mass media and his critique of the forces at work behind the daily news.
Nineteen Eighty-four
Film produced in 1954 by BBC about George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", proposed within our course on 'Utopias and the information society' for the discussion of the so-called utopia of the perfect security.
As highlighted by the lecturer, this novel, often taken to the film-stages, represents a significant and inspiring dystopia with respect the ideals of the transparent society.
The Social Dilemma
This 2020 American docudrama film was directed by Jeff Orlowski and written by Orlowski, Davis Coombe, and Vickie Curtis. It examines -using the voices of protagonist in the development of social media technology- how the very design of these technologies nurtures an addiction, manipulates people's views, emotions, and behavior, and spreads conspiracy theories and disinformation, to maximize profit. The film also examines the issue of social media's effect on mental health (including the mental health of adolescents and rising teen suicide rates), as well as the risk for social confrontation, and therefore breaching the foundations of the achievement of the general will.
Huxley: The ultimate revolution
Aldous Huxley in a speech given to Berkley in which he admits that dystopic novels "Brave New World" and "1984" were not just fiction, but blueprints for two types of controlled and enslaved societies.
"The prophetic Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, speaks to an audience at University of California, Berkeley, surrounding the use of terrorism and pharmaceuticals to create willing slaves out of the population." (Presentation)
"And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing ⦠a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods." (Aldous Huxley)
Possible Utopias Today (in German)
Radio Dialog between Adorno and Bloch
Ernst BLOCH (1885-1977) was a German Marxist philosopher, influenced by Hegel and Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinkers such as Müntzer and Paracelsus. Bloch's work focuses on the thesis that in a humanistic world where oppression and exploitation have been eliminated there will always be a truly revolutionary force.
Theodor ADORNO (1903-1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, music theorist and composer. Social philosopher in the tradition of Hegel, Marx and Freud. With his social criticism, he is one of the founders and main representatives of the social-philosophical thinking of the 20th and 21st centuries, the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory.