The maker movement is promising to reshape our relationship with the design and manufacture of computers and electronic devices by bringing a DIY approach into this field that has - so far - remained the exclusive domain of big industry. At the heart of this revolution is the Arduino - a tiny, sky blue circuit board. We meet Italian technology designer Massimo Banzi at the Maker Faire in Shenzen, in southeastern China. He is there to talk about his creation, the Arduino, the open-source computer control device that has fuelled a movement of 'makers'. Thousands of people are adopting Arduino to build everything from 3-D printers to drones, smart home devices to robotics. As much as he is seen as a minor deity by the tech community, he is equally humbled by them, and by their creativity and passion. He believes Arduino is an accessible tool that can help anyone design and invent, help people do something differently, and bring about social change. Across the Pacific, widespread anxiety amongst the Japanese about the nuclear fallout in Fukushima has inspired former journalist Kiki and other volunteers to take action. They built their own Geiger counters using Arduino, established a citizen-based monitoring network and realised that official stations were systematically underestimating the radiation risks. These volunteers are now Safecast, an NGO dedicated to citizen monitoring, and Kiki takes us to their workshop in Fukushima, where they make all their own devices. Koriyama and Aizu are making a bicycle bristling with sensors which will collect a whole host of environmental data wherever it goes, while others are engineering radiation sensors attached to solar panels to devices that collect and monitor seaweed from the Japanese coast.
Evan "Rabble" Henshaw-Plath is a coder, activist, anarchist, and a hacker. He is also one of the original developers of Twitter. Henshaw-Plath believes that, as a tech activist, his role is to promote social justice, and he is eager to empower civil society to influence politics through the use of software. He explains how TxTMob, a platform that enabled protesters to send text messages to large groups anonymously, formed the basis of Twitter. But when he came to the realisation that Twitter was not the world-changing idea he had hoped it would be, he sold his share. Now bridging the worlds of hackers, activists and Silicon Valley start-ups, he's on a mission: to use techniques he has learned in the world of lean start-ups to support the technology being developed by activist groups. The technologies he's promoting are all about allowing people to truly have secure communications, and his attempts to use Silicon Valley techniques have provoked resistance from his radical colleagues. Can Henshaw-Plath convince the activists to steal from the capitalists in the name of efficacy, or is that a political compromise too far?
Russian-born Danja Vasiliev and New Zealander Julian Oliver are part of a growing movement of coders and hackers who use their skills to create questioning and humorous digital art. Along with Gordan Savicic, they wrote the Critical Engineers manifesto, which posits: "The greater the dependence on a technology the greater the need to study and expose its inner workings, regardless of ownership or legal provision." Through their art, Oliver and Vasiliev are focusing on showing how vulnerable the public is to mass surveillance. They create visual, interactive digital objects, do street interventions and performance, and use engineering to comment upon the world we live in. "Engineering is perhaps the most transformative language of our time. Engineering shapes the way that we move, communicate and think," Oliver says. Oliver and Vasiliev's past projects include "Men in Grey" (2009 - 2014), in which the artists dressed in grey suits and carried briefcases displaying private messages that people sent in public, networked places, such as cafes with wifi. As Oliver explains, he creates projects "which engender a healthy paranoia". We follow the duo and their colleague Bengt Sjölén as they construct and launch their latest project: a weather balloon modified with a computer and radio scanning equipment to monitor and intercept what is impossible to pick up from Earth - transmissions in the upper atmosphere. They are particularly interested in the unmanned aerial vehicle drone-to-satellite microwave signal domain and expect to reveal secret drones flying above Europe that rove above our heads. We see them build the technical side of the balloon, negotiate the flying licences and launch site, and fulfil the legal requirements before they send the balloon on its 30km vertical journey to the edge of space, which we see from the balloon-cam. The team then interpret the data and turn it into visual representations of the objects and communications taki
Technology researcher and thinker Evgeny Morozov believes the entire discussion around cool, new innovative technology is a giant distraction from the most important issues. In this film, Morozov unravels the digital landscape and shows us the real processes that are leading the huge transfer of power away from ordinary people. We meet him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is researching the digital history of the world. Morozov shows us how cutting-edge biometric and facial recognition technology leads to a world without privacy. He argues that instant identification leads to over-discrimination. Morozov views data as a "new powerful weapon". "It plays an important role in generating value for those companies and we have to understand where it comes from. And it comes from us - the users," he says. "One has to be very naive to believe that this data is not going to shape how we live the rest of our lives, especially when insurance companies and banks are so eager to incorporate it in their decision-making," says Morozov. "Unless we change the legal status of data, we're not going to get very far." We also look at the reality of the so-called "sharing economy", where people pool their assets, such as houses or, cars and their time and labour. Is this really as friendly as the word "sharing" might imply or just another business? We meet the lawyer representing Uber taxi drivers in a nationwide law suit against the company. The drivers have found the "flexible working" conditions are so detrimental to their business that they've now had to fight against the company for their basic employment rights. We also see how self-trackers who use health-focused technology like Fitbit end up handing over large amounts of their data. But what does it mean when people begin monitoring everything about themselves? We examine the broader consequences for everyone. With data-harvesting companies collecting our social and financial information and sel
Pablo Soto, former software developer, activist and recently elected councilor for Participation and Transparency in Madrid's radical new administration, is trying to build the technology for a direct democracy, allowing citizens to propose and elect their own laws. Together with colleague and fellow democracy activist Miguel Arana, Soto is working on a website that will allow the people of Spain's capital city to suggest, select and vote on new policies directly. Decide Madrid enables citizens to express their views on whatever issues they feel the government should be addressing and to make new policy proposals. If any idea gets enough public support, through registered by votes on the website, the government will hold a referendum for the whole of the city to decide. "Everything that's happening now can be understood as part of a huge change that started in Spain four years ago," Soto explains, referring to the 15M or indignados movement that began in 2011. "We didn't come here to play the game of the parties. We came here to play the game of the people." While the website seems the perfect response to calls for more democracy in Spain, it is not without its detractors. Opposition parties are trying to scare people off the idea by warning them of the dangers of empowering technology to dictate government policy. The developers also have to convince a sceptical older segment of the population who don't trust or understand the technology. Are the people of Madrid ready for people power? And can its creators get enough participation to keep the project alive - and protect it from political opposition and media oblivion?
Amnesty International report that Rio de Janeiro police kill more than 400 civilians a year - one of the highest rates in the world. Police are almost never charged, let alone convicted. New York techies Harlo Holmes and Nathan Freitas are developing a smartphone app so media activists in Rio de Janeiro, like Colectivo Papa Reto, can securely document police violence. A group of citizen journalists and a human rights organisation join the coders, Holmes and Freitas, as they beta test an app called CameraV. This app captures key metadata about a given moment and embeds that data into the image's pixels. The app developers are effectively putting the power of metadata back into the hands of the people by hacking the smartphone's key sensors, so that citizens can record events and hold those in power accountable.
After the Edward Snowden revelations, President Evo Morales said the United States was conducting electronic surveillance on "our most senior authorities" and stopped using his own email account. This film investigates how Bolivian senator Nelida Sifuentes has led the campaign to restructure the way in which Bolivia and Latin America communicate, and restore power to ordinary citizens. The tiny mountainous South American country has one of the world's slowest Internet connections, but the senator is leading the drive to develop infrastructure and software that will make Bolivia digitally independent.