The Digital Human Folgen

Illustration by Seonaid MacKayThe history of early cinema, radio, and television has suffered from a mass loss of material. Lon Chaney’s vampiric grin and Betty Balfour’s joyful dances were melted down for the silver. Canisters full of voices from radio’s early days cast aside. Doctor Who and Dad’s Army fans still scour basements and attics in the hope of finding episodes lost decades ago. When a new technology creates a new artform, we seem to make the same mistake - not seeing the value, and ditching parts of our cultural history.The same mistake was made with video games. Compounding this is the fact that games are a particularly challenging art form to preserve. Technology is constantly changing, consoles rapidly become obsolete, and for the first few decades the companies that made the games had no financial incentive to save old games - it was all too easy for games to be cast into the void.However, the gamer community has long been fighting against this erasure of history, and now more and more organisations are forming to save not just games, but the cultural and social history tied up in the games, and the communities who love them.Aleks Krotoski explores how we can prevent gems of video game history from being lost, while following the unlikely story of how one of these forgotten games was recovered against the odds.

In 2006 the creators of the alternate reality game, Perplex City set a puzzle challenge called Billion to One. With only one photograph and a first name players were tasked with using the internet to find out who the man was in the photo. Despite thousands of people looking for Satoshi he stayed hidden for 14 years until eventually, just before New Year in 2021 Tom Lucas in Germany used reverse image search and in under five minutes discovered who he was, where he lived, worked and how to contact him. This may be considered progress for those who want to be found but for people like Sian who live under Witness Protection, advancements in technology means stepping out of her house becomes a huge risk. Because we capture so much of our lives and put it online, where ever Sian goes she has to be vigilant she’s not caught on camera or video. Just one reverse image search could mean she is found, which could have dire consequences for her and her family. In Japan, Satoshi records his first interview since being found giving a voice to the Billion to One puzzle photo for the first time. Aleks finds out if Satoshi knew thousands of people were looking for him and how feels about being found? Producer Kate Bissell Researcher Juliet Conway

Dreams have fascinated people since the dawn of humanity, seen as prophetic, used by the ancient Greeks to diagnose illness before physical symptoms appeared, and inspiring some of the world’s greatest inventions and works of art.But dreams have a darker side. Often we meet our internalised anxieties in our sleeping subconscious. During the Pandemic there was a surge of people reporting having more dreams, especially vivid, nightmarish visions - facing down swarms of insects, swept away by title waves, or being overwhelmed and oppressed by unstoppable forces. At the same time, there was a spike in online searches for ways to induce lucid dreaming, and how to take control of dreams.Aleks Krotoski explores why we have this urge to take control of our dreams, how technology can influence us in our sleep, and finds out if it’s wise to really try to take control, when we’re still figuring out the purpose and mechanics of dreams and don’t yet know the consequences of tinkering with them.