The Digital Human

It does not interject, it has endless patience and you gain empathy from shared experience. Aleks Krotoski explores how the online space has become our greatest confidante...

Aleks is looking at regret, that sinking, nagging feeling when we realise we have made the wrong choice or when things have not gone the way we hoped or envisaged. Ethan Zuckerman was one of the early architects of user generated content on the internet in the mid nineties. He created the code that lead to the pop up advert which he still regrets today but Aleks finds out not for the reasons you w...

It's the life we're told we want, where we just shout at a device and our needs are met as quickly as the supply chain allows. Aleks Krotoski explores frictionless digital living. But is there value in friction? Aleks hears from someone who's life depends on it, mountaineer Andy Kirkpatrick. He has a reputation for stacking the odds against himself as much as possible; long routes, often climbed a...

From the dawn of civilisation, human beings have yearned to predict the future. In the past you might have consulted the Oracle at Delphi or sat down for a tarot reading to steer you through life. Today, the internet offers amazing potential for predictive technology. There isn't a part of the natural world or human existence that isn't recorded and quantified, even the most mundane aspects of our...

Aleks Krotoski asks if blaming social media for recent political upheaval misses the point and we end up giving too much power to the technology and not enough to ourselves in how opinions become formed.

If we look hard enough, we have access to information online about other people, and about issues we may think we need to know. But is this always a good thing? Are there some things that we'd be better off not knowing? Producer: Kate Bissell.

The human face is quintessential part of our identity - crucial for communication, expressing emotion and understanding our place in the world. So what happens when that most human of interfaces is placed over what boils down to a cluster of motors and a few lines of code? Aleks Krotoski explores how we will be psychologically affected by machines that can look us in the eye and smile back at us....

One of the major criticisms of social media is that it's disconnecting us, as individuals, from society and from real physical interactions. But if a key element of 'tribe' is communication and connectivity then the digital world arguably holds unlimited bounds for tribes. Mumsnet for instance has changed how we view mums as a social group. While marketers and advertisers may have seen them as a t...

There's nothing more human that adapting a tool to make your life better, it's the rationale behind every innovation. Aleks Krotoski explores how our digital tools can be reinvented in powerful ways by individuals seeking a better life. Whether it's how smuggled USB sticks filled with content from the outside world inspire North Koreans to defect to the south, or the way a single photo of woman ru...

In this episode of The Digital Human Aleks Krotoski asks if social media is creating a new era of shame. Psychotherapist Aaron Balick explains how shame needs a witness in order to be felt, we need to be able to see our selves through the eyes of another. If we break a social norm we are made to feel shame. Shame is a powerful emotion that can control our behaviour and infiltrate every aspect of o...

For many of us the modern world is thankfully one of abundance, where we can indulge ourselves at every turn. But why is it so difficult to say when we've had enough; of foods we know aren't good for us, of TV programmes that play the next episode automatically, of the fleeting social connections we get through online platforms? As advanced as our technological world has become our brains haven't...

Aleks Krotoski explores living in a digital world.

Spam and its prevention have been a driving force in the history of the internet. It's changed laws and communities, language and culture. It comes in all shapes and forms, the most popular of which is advance fee scams. You know the drill: an agent for the widow of charitable billionaire wants to give you a share of a multi million-dollar 'inheritance'... in return for your help in getting access...

From funerals to the Burning the Circle festival held every year on the Isle of Aran to surgeon's scrubbing up before an operation, Aleks explores the very human experience of rites of passage and ritual and why this very human experience can help make sense of ourselves online. A modern day rite of passage could be getting your first mobile or social media account but do we have rituals to accomp...

Sin eating was an age old British practice carried out by those on the fringes of their communities. When someone died the sin eater would consume a ritualistic meal over the corpse and in doing so they would take on their sins. Whether they were outcasts because of this, or to start with folklorists can't say. What is known for certain though is that they were among the poorest - who else would d...

Aleks goes in search of silence. In our digital world has silence become harder to find, or are we looking for it in all the wrong places? Leif Haugen is a Fire watcher who spends six months of a year stationed at Toma lookout, on a mountain in Montana. He says only fire watchers who are at peace with themselves are able to stick it out. Living in silence makes you look inwards at who you really a...

Aleks Krotoski tells the story of a film that doesn't exist and the online community convinced that it does. We hear from people who have come together on the online site Reddit to share their memories of the film, including a former video shop worker called Don. Many of them have very clear memories of watching Shazaam and are convinced it's disappearance is related to a strange phenomenon called...

There is an old joke that talking to yourself is first sign of madness but we now know its an essential mental tool . So how much of what we do online is that same inner speech?

Geoff Lean was in a coma for a month, during this time he could hear and feel everything but it wasn't until he woke up from the coma that he realised he had also unconsciously absorbed visual information through his eyes. Aleks investigates Blindsight, one of the most curious phenomenon's in cognitive neuroscience and helps to explain how Geoff was able to see without seeing. Milena Cunning went...

Technology has always allowed us to push the boundaries of what's real and not real. From filters on our holiday snaps to recreating life in a laboratory. Is it any wonder then that amidst all this 21st century noise we're searching for an authentic voice? But what authenticity actually is can be difficult to define, particularly in the digital sphere where filters, artifice and simulation are par...

We seem to be living in a world of polarised opinions giving rise to increasingly angry exchanges on television, print and of course social media. Aleks Krotoski asks how online anger works and is it a symptom or the cause of the problem. An enormous Chinese study demonstrated that angry content is the most shared across the web while US researchers have asserted that while we might not be any ang...

Aleks Krotoski explores life in the digital world. What makes us laugh and why? And when so much of the web is there to tickle our funny bone, does anyone ever laugh out loud?

The world we experience through screen based technology is two dimensional which some argue creates distance between the viewer and the viewed but can modern day virtual reality story telling using a three dimensional perspective go further than any other medium of technology to enable us to really experience the lives of others, to walk in another man's shoes? Vicky Sutherland is mum to eight yea...

So much of our experience of technology can feel a bit like being haunted. It starts like any good ghost story with the just mildly unsettling; things aren't were you left them or seem to have moved on their own within our devices. Its a creepy feeling that leaves you unsure about what to believe. Our understanding of how much of technology works is so limited that when it starts to behave out of...

Our records define us - birth records, death records, crime records, marriage records - but what if you don't want to be defined by your records? And how do our physical and digital traces say affect us? In this episode of The Digital Human, Aleks explores these questions by hearing three very different tales of recorded lives...