Having been prompted to check my BBC iPlayer account today, I discovered that a few programs I had downloaded were about to expire. So I have been watching TV. A particular series I’d like to share with you was broadcast on BBC4 in January. It is called Visions of the Future, and it is a 3-part documentary series fronted by Michio Kaku. I didn’t find out about it in time to get the first program, which is about AI, but I’ve seen the second and third. Part 2 is about genetic engineering and is very solid, but part three is spectacularly wide-ranging.

Titled “The Quantum Revolution”, is actually covers a huge range of engineering developments from anti-gravity to invisibility cloaks, space elevators, nuclear fusion, nanotechnology and teleportation. Kaku gets to see all that at work for real, or at least in small scale mock-ups. Of course some of this is a little limited. Right now we can’t build carbon nanotube cables long enough for a real space elevator, and teleportation only works on photons, but Kaku does get to film an actual tokamak in operation. If he’d managed to fit in programmable matter as well, rather than just talking about nanotech fabricators, it would have been perfect.

The BBC currently says that it has no plans to release the series on DVD, but I suspect that those of you who are experts in the art of bit torrent can find downloads. Everyone else might like to check out the web page for the series, which has a bunch of links to other interesting web sites.