A two part documentary series released by the BBC back in 2012, we see Professor Jim Al-Khalili investigates the important concepts of energy and information.
Episode 1: Energy
How was it that Humans acquired the power to transform the planet as we did? Looking at the Earth at night from space reveals just how successful we have been in harnessing and manipulating energy and how important it is to our very existence. Energy is vital to us all, we use it to build the structures that surround and protect us, we use it to power our transport and light our homes but even more crucially, energy is essential to life itself, without the energy we get from food we eat, we die. But what exactly is energy and what makes it so useful to us?
Episode 2: Information
We are surrounded by order, over the last 300 years we have developed amazing new ways to take advantage and harness energy and we have used this ability to transform our environment, this however is simply one type of visible order that we have created on planet Earth, there is another type of invisible order. Something that we are only now truly understanding the complexity of but one that nature has been harnessing for billions years, something we call information.
I watched this 2012 documentary in 2026 on TUBI. It is well crafted, appealing to me historically and scientifically. At age 67, I’ve come to appreciate learning about the scientists, mathematicians and tinkerers, some famous, others not so much, who have impacted science and technology, many never knowing how much.
It was also refreshing to hear of their accomplishments as well as their human nature, especially as some of their contemporaries, so-called experts in their fields, tried to dismiss their contributions and breakthroughs.
Particularly surprising was the mechanical wonder of the Silk weaving loom, and its use of mechanical punch cards to “program” the loom in the selection of colored threads to automatically create the desired woven pattern. I am often more impressed by the mechanical designers of the 18th and 19th centuries than I am of the modern electronics era.