Documentaries I’d Like to See Before I Die (Or Everyone Forgets)
I’d like to think that I have something of a second nature when it comes to whether or not there is a documentary made or in production for any of my disjointed hobbies and interests. It’s not one of those skills you showcase in your job interview, but I seem to have this knack for religiously crawling the web in search for films I think I’d enjoy. Surprisingly, and to my great pleasure, a lot of these fringe interests I posses already have films about them. Awesome. However, there are a few that simply do not- or, have a film that doesn’t satiate my particular appetite.
So, for my sanity, I made a list of the topics I’d personally like to see filmed. And, in some cases, some topics I’d probably find gratification in filming myself.
Written below is that very list. Think of this more as a way of me getting the thoughts from my head to paper as opposed to a list of full-bodied explanations and fleshed-out ideas.
Demoscene. There are already a few demoscene documentaties out there. For example, The Demoscene Documentary is about the demoscene in Finland and Moleman 2 is a demoscene documentary focusing mainly on Hungary. While these are in fact good films, they each have a specific scope. From what I gather, the demoscene can be radically different from country to country, making it difficult to understand as a whole when only presented with a few of its parts. I’d propose an episodic piece showcasing the demoscene in a variety of countries – each country having its own segment. While these existing documentaries have touched on Finland and Hungary, there are still Germany, USA, Denmark, and Norway to consider (and probably others).
Bitcoin & Digital Currency. We’ve all heard of Bitcoin by now, especially as it makes waves at it’s current high value. However, Bitcoin itself has an interesting past and makes an interesting statement. If you do any detective work about how Bitcoin came to be, you will be sucked up into a mysterious story about how nobody knows the identity of the creator or what happened to him. The conspiracy theories are vast and plenty. We also touch on the interesting issue of an unregulated worldwide currency, governments attempting regulation, bitcoin-mining malware botnets, attacks on exchanges, etc. How about how crazy some people go with their mining setups? Dozens of caseless computers fillied with graphics cards- a cyberpunk daydream turned reality. How about using FPGAs and these new ASIC rigs? Now, that’s just bitcoin. There are numerous other digital currencies out there such as the newer litecoin, or even e-gold (Created in 1996). Digital currency has been around longer than most people think.
Cypherpunk. The cypherpunk movement does for cryptograhy what the cyberpunk scene did for personal computing. While cypherpunks have been around for decades, the interest within the scene has been renewed and pushed towards the mainstream more recently. Going back to “A Cypherpunk Manifesto” and the cypherpunk mailing list, we see early discussions of online privacy and censorship, paving the way for Bitcoin, Wikileaks, CryptoParty, Tor, 3D-printing of weaponry, etc.
Usenet. Started in 1980, Usenet is a system for users to read and post messages. Usenet can be seen as the precursor to internet forums, and is much like a Bulletin Board System in theory except it is distributed among many servers instead of a central authority. As time goes on, Usenet continues to grow in bandwidth usage, now generating terabytes of traffic a day. This is mostly through binary file transfers as opposed to messages. Despite many main ISPs deciding to remove Usenet access from their internet services, many still seek out paid access.
Pirate Radio UK. While Pirate Radio USA and Making Waves do a fantastic job at covering pirate Radio in the US, I haven’t seen much of an effort to show off pirate radio in the UK. From what I’ve gathered, there are an uncountable number of pirate radio stations across the pond, and it’s a different game when compared to the US. At the peak of pirate radio’s popularity, there were near 600 stations active in the UK while there are presently 150, mostly based in London. Here’s a mini piece from Vice.
Darknet. Not in regards to file sharing. More covering the darknet as a blanket term for an independant or ad-hoc network with some sort of disconnection from the internet. Considering topics like Hyperboria and CJDNS, Tor and the Deep Web, Meshneting for fun or necesity, Tin-Can, and so-on. As the hardware becomes less expensive and more devices have networking abilities, creating a scalable network becomes a more achievable task.
Dyson. I feel that James Dyson doesn’t get as much credit as a revolutionary engineer as he deserves. Dyson focuses on improvement: taking the wheel and making it better. No pun intended, but his first success was the creation of a fiberglass wheelbarrow that used a ball instead of a wheel. Afterwards, he famously created over 1000 prototypes for a new vaccuum cleaner using cyclone technology after noticing problems with his Hoover. Dyson repeatedly uses creative thinking and pulls inspiration from unlikely sources.
Raspberry Pi. While the Raspberry Pi was not necessarilly a unique and new concept, it was certainly one of the most well executed. We have seen other incarnations of plug computers such as the Beagleboard or the Sheevaplug, but the Raspberry Pi’s addition of integrated video sets it apart. And, at the price of $30, makes it incredibly affordable. Many would argue that what makes the Pi so special is the community that has formed around it, and not necessarily the hardware that ties it together. Everyone stretches their imagination and expertise: if it can be on the Pi, it should. Aside from the community, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been done an incredible job at cultivating the technology and inspiring the next generation of young programmers and hardware hackers.
Kickstarter. There have been documentaries in the works that focus on crowdfunding, but I’m not as interested in the crowdfunding movement as much as I am in Kickstarter the company. While Indie GoGo has been around for a longer time, they do not seem to be held together as tightly. Kickstarter seems like not only an interesting company, but one that holds itself, and those who utilize its services, to a high standard.
QUBE. Here’s an odd one for that likely nobody has heard of. QUBE was the first interactive TV station, started in 1977 in Columbus, Ohio. Residents who subscribed to the cable service received a device that looked something like a calculator that allowed them to communicate back to the station during shows. Aside from the interactive feature, QUBE was on the forefront of pay-per-view programming and special interest content. QUBE soon went bankrupt and dissolved in the early 1980s. As a bit of an aside, I think I actually tried contacting the webmaster of that site a while back to ask if I could get a copy of the “QUBE DVD” for archiving but didn’t get a reply. Let’s hope he/she runs Webalizer or Google Analytics and sees some referrer traffic. Maybe it’ll be enough to spark a conversation.
So here ends my list. While the majority of these ideas are feasible, I can’t help but think a few might end up slipping too far and too fast into obscurity before their time. Other ideas on here might be too early in their lives. Doing something now, or even within the next decade, would only show a small part of the eventual picture.
Do I expect any of these to be made? Not particularly. But you never know.
Everyone gets lucky once in a while.
Tags: bitcoin, cypherpunk, darknet, demoscene, digital currency, documentary, dyson, kickstarter, meshnet, pirate radio, qube, raspberry pi, usenet
