Interesting IT related documentaries

The holidays are upon us and for most its time to wind down. Maybe time for some nice though-provoking documentaries before the food-coma sets in. 😉 Most of the documentaries listed here are created by Tegenlicht (Backlight). Backlight provides some of the best documentaries on Dutch television and luckily they made most of them available in English. The following list is a set of documentaries that impressed me. If you found some awesome documentaries yourself, please leave a comment.
Tech revolution on Wall Street
Backlight created a trilogy on the tech revolution on Wall Street over a period of three years. The most famous one is the second one, “Money and Speed, inside the black box”. It received multiple awards and although it’s the second documentary in the series of three, I recommend starting with that one. If you are intrigued about how the impact of these algorithms, continue with the other two episodes, “Quants. The alchemists of Wall Street” and “Wall Street Code”. They almost make you feel like you are watching a thriller, highly recommended!
08.02.2010: Quants, The alchemists of Wall Street. English | Dutch
20.03.2013: Money & Speed: Inside the Black Box. English | Dutch
04.11.2013: Wall Street Code. English | Dutch
Extra video
08.02.2010: Quants, George Dyson. English
01.07.2011: Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world. English (Ted Talk)
Unfortunately these two documentaries are Dutch only.
21.10.2013: Big Data, the Shell Search. Dutch
Tegenlicht onderzoekt hoe je met behulp van big data kunt doordringen in gesloten bolwerken. Wat geven deze enorme informatiestromen prijs over een multinational als Shell?
1.10.2014: Zero Days veiligheidslekken te koop Dutch
Tegenlicht neemt je mee in de handel van ‘zero days’, onbekende lekken in software of op het internet. Een strijd tussen ‘white hat’ en ‘black hat’ hackers bepaalt onze online veiligheid.
Although the voice over is Dutch, most of this documentary is in English, you might want to give it a try. It focuses on legal trade of unknown security vulnerabilities, so called zero days. Yes your government is also acquiring these from hackers, all perfectly legal!
Enjoy! And of course I wish you all happy holidays!