DRS_Education - 2019-01-21
"Faith in Numbers" examines the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance from the perspective of how commercialism, climate change, and the Black Death influenced cultural development. He examines the impact of Cistercian waterpower on the Industrial Revolution, derived from Roman watermill technology such as that of the Barbegal aqueduct and mill. Also covered are the Gutenberg printing press, the Jacquard loom, and the Hollerith punch card tabulator that led to modern computer programming.
It’s absolutely amazing watching this series, and the ingredients of the Internet are there. Programming with Looms, arranging letters with Printing Presses, being able to transmit electrical signals with Telegraph etc. all these simple technologies combined billions of times per second by micro transistors and you have the modern Monster that we are using to watch it. Fantastic stuff.
Haha, "simple" technologies. It's easy to follow someone's design or copy it, (or even improve on it), but do you think you would have invented any of these things independently?
Opera
One of the best science series ever. Will you be posting episodes 6-10? Thanks
Thank you Mr Furano
@MrFurano I just watched two episodes with total delight. Thank you so much!
@MrFurano Thank you so much for that!
Where are the rest of the episodes?
Please post the remaining episodes of this series. I was 10 years old when I watched this on my local PBS station and so I never bought into the "linear" idea of history presented in my public school; Thank God. I majored in history at college and I choose my recreational reading to this day (43 years later) based on my exposure to Mr. Burke's view of change. I take a seemingly small "connection" from a current book and explore its offshoots in my next read or listen if I'm in an audiobook mood. Thank you for posting such a clear version of this incredibly prophetic series.
Incredible how historical and predictive this series was and might still be.
I enjoyed it then, and thanks to DRS, I'm enjoying it again!
Love the ending! Consider when this was made. The 1970s I believe, before the internet. And he ends with... "What will (the computer) bring us?" Well now we know! So now the question is, where do we go from here? A message from the past, urging us to look after our future.
Indeed, and the use of the computer card is so antiquated now, he'd need another segment to explain what it was
Most of his programs are part philosophical.
He is inciting you and other viewers to think about what kind of society we want. You can just sit back and ride the wave, or let someone else make all the decisions, or actively try and make the world a different place, using history as a guide - note I said different, not better.
This is why he intermingles some discovery that led to a higher standard of living with the same discovery that lead to some gruesome weapon of war, or allowed some equally gruesome tactic to work.
No discover is good or evil, just the way it is utilised.
LOVE the way this man explains things!
I'll double-down on all requests for the rest of the series! Please! I bought the "Connections" book back in the day, and I treasure it, but the series is far more captivating.
Murray Lindsay In the meantime you can watch remaining episodes online by googling ‘connections 1978’ and turning the ‘videos’ filter on. Most of the remaining ones are on dailymotion or some other non-yt platform.
Love the synth music. Also used in A Clockwork Orange.
Haunting at the end when he holds up a punch card to show a modern NYC and mention that the whole society would fall down. The falling down part shows the World Trade Center in the background. Very haunting. But an excellent episode.
Just more foreshadowing.
@Bill D. in Iowa No such things as "coincidences" ... right!?
Well given the WTC was a symbol of NY and US Capitalism, it's not surprising - the same reason it was targeted, so no real coincidences there.
Reminds me of that tragedy
9 11 and all 5 Phases of its 3 11 sequel are predictively programmed in Burke's series. Phase 1 - West Coast Arson Nov 8th 2018. Phase 2 in 2 parts - F @ k e broadcast threat excuse to put communism on the World (2020) Phase 2 - part 2: the shot (2021). Phase 3: US West Coast submarine f @ k e attack Boom (from Nov 3rd 2021 to March 11th 2022 - expected). Phase 4 - the Long US Blackout. Phase 5 - The 2nd US Civil War.
Throw in Tower Bridge, Paris and Toronto 0ps for good measure.
(Point to mention is that Phases 2, 3 and 4 are and will be blamed on Oriental Countries).
Bravo! This is really excellent. A copy will be included in the survival kit I am preparing for near-future times. A great view.
As a professional musician, I must express complete delight at the quality of the background music used in this series. Bartok, Stravinsky, many others!
Thanks for this wonderful series!! Will you be uploading the rest of Season 1? There were 10 episodes. I'd so love to see all of them again! Subscribed!
@Kay Harker Thankyou so much. I'm enjoying this immensely!
I remember when this first came out....could not get enough of it. Changed all perspective of history....
change the perspective of life !.. these series should be show for students all around the world !
44:10 "... The size of a dollar bill of the period. Now Hollerith chose that size because they already had holders for dollar bills and what that meant was he wouldn't to design and build one himself."
Head turn. No fool
One of the greatest lines in any documentary ever. Thirty years later I remember hearing that. Thanks for posing.
Considering that there is only one satellite used, that accuracy is very impressive...
The music playing during the closing is a portion of part V - Finale, from Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (1943)
James asks around minute 3 how well we organized we will become (this was the 70s). Well, all I can say is my doordash drivers still can't find my apartment building or follow simple instructions, so... not at all, James.
He started with satellite location...before our current GPS. How organized will we become? Occasionally our GPS navigation directs people to drive their car into a lake. Mine once took me on a 35 mile trip to get to a location that was only two miles from where I started.
@Arctic Hamer you should learn to interpret data and make independent decisions instead of relying on technology. That or embrace the voyage 🤷🏾
He means "we" a in society overall, not individuals.
Surely the fact you are able to buy a meal and pay for it remotely shows some signs of organisation?
I'm sure soon drones will deliver it anyway.
I watched this series when it first came out, and it's still interesting and informative. Back then if I wanted to buy something I had to go to the shops and hope to find the right thing, or have a printed catalogue, send off a cheque with an order form and wait for weeks. Now I can search and order online and two days later it's delivered to my doorstep. I call that an improvement.
The "Connections" mode of learning encourages synthetic conceptualization.
@1:45 The satellite is orbiting to the east, following the equator, not from pole to pole.
@4:20 Except in the East, where the eastern half of the empire, which we commonly refer to as the Byzantine empire, lasted another thousand years before finally succumbing to the Turks.
I wish James Burke was still doing TV
So you could learn how the great emojis and memes came about in the early 21th century?
.Comrade, James Burke was declared an Enemy of The People™ for producing these White Supremacist propaganda videos. He has now been purged in the name of inclusiveness, tolerance, and diversity.
I recognized the voiceover at the end, where Burke mentions E. G. Marshall; the original broadcast included a ten-minute segment where a panel would discuss topics raised in the episode. (I know this from having audio tapes of the tv broadcast, that I listened to all through my teens.) What I reallly want is the soundtrack list for each episode! I discovered Mahler through this awesome show. 8^]
There used to be a lot of late night discussion programs, just people in chairs talking about subject. Long programs and people were properly questioned and answered for themselves.
Any chance to see the rest of the series?
@Kay Harker Thanks!
12:53 you can still hear a carrillon at any good enough university, I still remember one at my alma mater playing "The Final Countdown" by Europe on the first night of final exams
4:50 Every time I see James step across that gap in the stones, I'm afraid he's going to fall in.
What year did the series start? It was my favorite
Chris b — First episode aired October 1978.
The monks went in for six hours hard labor a day. As opposed to the 8-12 hours a day low income workers have to do now to pay their rent and buy food.
Added six hours of labor a day.
Dont like your job? Train yourself up and get a better one. Or stay poor. Its how the universe works. No one feel sorry for you. get over it.
@Stephen Vince Wow! That sound like a rather entitled attitude. For people struggling to get by day to day training for and getting a higher paying job is no where near as easy as you try to make it sound.
I'm gonna guess the average peasant at the time often worked 12 or more hours most days... Monks were definitely a few steps up...
@Patrick Nabors I expect the average peasant worked sunrise to sunset tending the fields and chopping wood to keep their fires going and after it got dark by the fire attended to chores such as mending their clothes and maintaining their tools.
3:15 Oh James, you have no idea. Message from 2020.
He had every idea. He knew the plans from the order of solomon.
Why did this stop after only four episodes? And what about his other work such as Connects 2, 3 & The Day the Universe changed?
28:35 I'm watching this on the Internet and my Smartphone for free. There are so much free knowledge that one has to be lazy not to find the answer to any question that comes to mind.
Except that the internet isn’t free.
@Wonka You're right that it's not exactly free, but it's a lot less than many other means of getting an education.
And many are lazy.
@Gregg Weber Well you can educate yourself on certain matters, but the problem with self learning is you may not get a proper overview or the subject.
People tend to gravitate toward the stuff they like and agree with, consequently they never inform themselves of disparate views, or anything they don't agree with - worse, they start looking for information to bolster their beliefs, rather than test it's voracity.
@Cheepchipsable -- No, I do not agree with you at all, but I will say that the downside of self education is that you don't get a fk'in paper from some rip off institution saying that you're a smart human being, and that is the ONLY drawback.
This cat is so 70's...
Watch how it is actually done, Hammond.
47:27 Thats unfortunate timing
Going along quite merrily and then...
Faith in Numbers
I flinched when I saw them.
soon as I saw it BINGO
c'mon man!
That's probably where Bin Laden got the idea.
47:29 ...if only he knew...
19:49 that's probably what will happen when covid19 pandemic ends lol
It's been happening all along.
Bizarre to see Ellis island like that
Now your GPS resides in your phone...
An early GPS system
FRILLY KNICKERS!
I do belong here because I am Italian so yay
Um, love these, but that sat link positioning explanation wasn't that good.
Pre GPS. How quaint.
Pretty dumb to use satalites when you can do the same exact thing on earth's surface...there are no satalites...towers are used to triangulate your position.. not satellites
Works if you are in the middle of the ocean?
@Cheepchipsable underground/underwater cables and repeaters are used in the middle of the ocean... wireless signals can go much further over water for obvious reasons...if you or anyone else have ever accidentally hit emergency button on your phone and cops show up within a couple min it's because they triangulated your phones position without using satellites...things always break...it's not if but when...it will take a certain trajectory to get to a "satellite" so you would be spending millions to repair a single "satellite"...not good for business
this was b4 gps.
en español viejo
Why the English baroque music on renaissance Venice intro?
Probably all they had in the library.
depot
47:25 ?
james had an erie way of predicting the future... in many ways throughout this series
Its called predictive programming. He pre-advertised 4 Ops in this series. 9 11, 22 22, 3 11 and the 4 11 blackout .
Moar?
Jokes aside, I first watched this series as a very young child, and have watched it multiple times since, but not in a very long time. It would be wonderful if you could do what you can to get the rest of them up.
dump
Democratization of knowledge has also led to the rise of TRUMPISM.
- Comrade, James Burke was declared an Enemy of The People™ for producing these White Supremacist propaganda videos. He has now been purged in the name of inclusiveness, tolerance, and diversity.
Which shows how good it is.
Art Vanden Berg - 2020-10-06
I first saw this series back around 1990 as part of an "Engineering and Society" course. They were interesting then and remain so today, but now that we know what happened in the following 30 years. This episode could end by showing people on cell phones and Burke saying "And thanks to all this, not only do you know where you are every single moment of the day, but so does Google. It knows what you like to read, watch, where you shop, and what you had for lunch. It even knows if you were near the scene of a crime. Right now that information is confidential, but for how much longer?"
N Be - 2021-10-05
I believe I'm connections 3 he touches on the internet as it was when that series was produced