This exciting series uses award-winning documentary films and text to involve the public in a study of the impact of science and technology in the 20th century. Programs focus on the rapid introduction of new communication technologies—the automobile, movies, radio, television, and the Internet—and on the astonishing impact that technological innovations have had on our work and home lives. We'll discuss how American society stimulated and encouraged technical change in communications and how these changes altered social, political, and economic patterns.

As Fast Forward so dramatically demonstrates, the 20th century, for all of its horrors (some of them, of course, a consequence of science and technology,) was an odyssey of science which really did deliver on its promise of a wonderful life, at least for those who could afford it.

PROGRAM TOPICS AND FILMS

Session 1: Fast Forward, an introduction

Film: Bigger, Better, Faster

Session 2: The Telephone

Film : The Telephone

Session 3: Movies

Film: Film History, Film Industry

Session 4: Radio

Film: Radio—Out of Thin Air

Session 5: Television

Film: Picture Power

Session 6: The Internet

Film: The Internet—Behind the Web