The guide to the internet, computers and digital culture includes a look at a proposal to place a tax on information obtained on the internet, and a report on measures to limit porn on the net. With Fenella George and Benjamin Woolley.
Tonight the guide to the internet, computers and digital culture is devoted to the theme of play. Fenella George looks at on-line gambling and meets the first internet bookie. Benjamin Woolley talks to games designer Peter Molyneux, whose passion for game-playing has extended to the design of his own house. In the review section, magician and computer enthusiast Penn Jillette gives his opinion on what makes a good CD-ROM.
Journalist Peter Warren tries to discover what happens to personal information held on public databases. Benjamin Woolley asks Aaron Sloman, a professor of artificial intelligence at Birmingham University, whether computers can ever be programmed to think for themselves and to feel emotion. Plus a report on a project that is seeking to create a computer model of a financial trader's expertise.
In an edition considering computers and memory, Fenella George meets some of Britain's computing pioneers, including the world's first programmer Tom Kilburn, and looks at the rebuilt wartime Colossus, the first electronic computer. Benjamin Woolley talks to futurologist Peter Cochrane, who claims that human memories could soon be captured on computer chips. Plus there's a look at the pastime of retro-gaming, where people re-create the experience of playing computer games of the late seventies and early eighties.
The last edition in the series takes a look at creation. American biologist Tom Ray explains how he believes evolution can be reproduced electronically and talks about his plans to release digital creatures across the internet to breed in people's computers. In the run-up to the general election the programme examines the growth of electronic democracy and it looks at the security threat of new spy satellites that could make surveillance pictures available across the net. With Benjamin Woolley and Fenella George.