Programme 2

Programme Outline

This programme investigates how pop groups, school students and commercial organisations use digital technology to create, store, transfer and reproduce information. The programme shows the power of search engines to locate even the most obscure facts. Computer graphics and extracts from the 1999 Faraday Lecture help to unravel the scientific principles behind this. They reveal the importance of pits, compression, and motion vectors in creating sharp sound and clear pictures.

00.00 — 5.00

A band making a recording for a new CD. Graphics show how analogue signals on audio tape are converted to digital signals which can then be stored and manipulated without any information being lost. Highly magnified pictures of a CD surface show how the final mix of the music is burned into the disc as a spiral sequence of pits and flats. How smaller pits and double layers enable feature-length films to be stored on a single DVD.

5.00 — 7.45

Demonstration of digital compression of still images as JPEGs: how the information is stored as combinations of 52 standard patterns. College students taking stills to put on the web.

7.45 — 10.00

Demonstration of digital compression of moving images as MPEGs: how the information needed to recreate the moving pictures is minimised by analysing the changes in motion. Digital compression techniques as the catalyst for the development of digital television.

10.00 — 12.30

The Internet, the web, email, telephone, cable television, digital television, and more. The band’s website: music, pictures, information, and a way to communicate directly with their manager.

12.30 — 17.10

Selling over the Internet. How search engines locate the information people are looking for. A demonstration of a prototype ‘intelligent’ search engine, which ‘learns’ what its owner wants to look for so that it can search more efficiently.

17.10 — end

Summing up: the importance of digital communication now and in the future.