InRealLife

Streaming video - 2015

As a society we seem to alternate between worship of and panic about the glittering world of the Internet, as a generation of children have grown up with a smart phone in hand, connected to the digital world 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Public discourse seems to revolve around ‘grooming’ and ‘privacy’, two issues that embody the fears and concerns of adults. What is less discussed is what it means to always be on, never alone, and bombarded by a world that has something to sell you and appears to know you better than yourself. For adults there was a ‘before’ the net. But for the current generation, at the time of their most rapid development they have no other experience and few tools with which to negotiate the overwhel...ming parade of opportunity and cost that the internet delivers directly into their hands. From the bedrooms of five teenagers, and across the globe to meet those who both engineer and observe the net, InRealLife takes a closer look at some of the behavioral outcomes that come from living in a commercially driven interruption culture – and asks if we are conscious enough of what the internet is and what its values are. Have we outsourced our kids to the net? Along the way we travel the physical journey of the internet, from fiber optic cables through the sewers of London, under the ocean to NY, Oregon and finally Silicon Valley, the film gently develops its thesis – that what is often thought of as a world that is ‘open, democratic and free’ is in fact a small group of players addicted to windfall profits. Meanwhile our kids are adapting to this new world, along with their expectation of friendship, their cognition and their sexuality. Featuring: Maggie Jackson: Award-winning author of 'Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age' and former Boston Globe columnist. Danah Boyd: Senior Researcher at Microsoft and one of the world's experts on youth culture surrounding technology and social media. Nicholas Carr: Pulitzer-prize nominated author of 'The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.'Sherry Turkle: Professor of Social science at MIT. Her research focuses on psychoanalysis and the human-technology relationship. In her most recent book, 'Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other' and her 2012 TED talk 'Connected, But Alone?' Turkle explores the authenticity of intimacy and connection through the internet. Luis Von Ahn: Professor of Computer Sciences at Carnegie Mellon and pioneer of crowdsourcing, inventing CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA (later sold to Google) which earned him international recognition and numerous honors.Clay Shirky: NYU professor, internet icon and writer on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. Jimmy Wales: Internet entrepreneur, free speech activist and co-founder of Wikipedia and Wikia.Nick Negroponte: Founder of the Media Lab and the 'One Laptop per Child' non-profit association. Julian Assange: Founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. And many others! "A shock-doc on the effect of incessant internet use on the malleable, still-growing teenage mind"– The Times"Provocative, mildly terrifying and essential"– The Metro"Many teenagers Kidron meets seem truly enslaved to their smart-phones"– The Financial Times"Beeban Kidron’s documentary about the reality of the online world looks for the strings"– The Evening Standard. more