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PBS Frontline - Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier

The first show of the Metanomics spring season began on Wednesday, January 27 at 12 pm PST, when host Robert Bloomfield interviewed Douglas Rushkoff, correspondent and writer of Frontline’s Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier – a PBS documentary that explores how our lives have changed due to our digital world. From how we learn, work, play and even make war, Digital Nation documents what we’ve gained – and what we’ve lost.

Can a love affair blossom in a virtual world? Are we seeing the end of attending a classroom in person? What happens when you wage war from thousands of miles away? As Digital Nation asks: “Is technology moving faster than we can adapt to it?”

The film, which airs on Tuesday, Feb 2, at 9pm ET on PBS, is a collaboration with individuals who have participated in the Digital Nation website:

“The Digital Nation Web site launched more than 10 months ago as part of FRONTLINE’s first multiplatform project, featuring short online video reports in addition to a mosaic of user-generated content called Your Stories designed to let visitors participate in the documentary process. The site also features a producers’ blog, embeddable video, and an archive of online events with expert guests.”

Douglas Rushkoff discussed the conception and future of Digital Nation, which broke new ground by meshing a website with a television documentary, and plans to get feedback from the documentary’s subjects after the show airs.
Rushkoff also spoke about his most recent book Life, Inc., noted as one of the best business books of 2009. Life, Inc. takes aim at the flaws in the “operating system” of corporatism which reaches into all aspects of our economic and personal lives.

Rushkoff argues for more direct interactions between people, unmediated by artificial corporate structures. Join us to hear about the role of virtual worlds and digital technology in the peer-to-peer relationships Rushkoff sees as the right way forward…