James Burke on Connections, 25 years later

Internet Archive is full of surprises. Counting back, this 45 min doc from 2004 is a great discussion with Burke on his seminal series. Wonder how he found the connections? It's in there. Wonder how he made it so engaging? It's in there. Heavy production values on the cheap? That too. It's all in there. Why haven't you clicked play yet?

Some of his predictions?

Cell phones/wireless media are the end of traditional news reporting, for the betterment of all via 20 million firsthand reporters, unfiltered by a centrally-vetted cultural bias. Local, culturally-oriented, witness-produced and better-produced news becomes coin.

Bing bang boom:

BURKE: I think if I had to do the series all over again... it would [finish with] some aspect between the coming marriage between nano-technology and electronics, the life-sciences... bring about an evolution we haven't begun to understand yet.

INTERVIEWER: ...the literal modification of life? Does that become the final link in the chain?

BURKE: In a sense, of course, it is. Because from then on, you don't discover, you invent. [Bold, from me.]

The only disappointing thing is that his view of "KnowledgeWeb," demo'd at the end, is so 1.0. But hey, he's close.