Good Tech Documentaries to Watch
Since the goal of Makefiles is to create videos on tech projects while giving the feeling of documentaries, I want to list here some good tech documentaries that you and I can watch.
This post will be updated as I find more interesting stuff to watch. Email me if you have a suggestion to add here.
As a sidenote, there are many pseudo documentaries that are just dramatization. I don’t enjoy it and I won’t post any here. Please don’t recommend Pirates of The Silicon Valley, The Social Network and crap like that.
But I do want to mention some TV Shows: Halt and Catch Fire is great imho, and Silicon Valley is hilarious.
I might keep the order here so you know if more items were added.
1 BBS: The Documentary – by Jason Scott
Oh I’m not that old (yet), but I had the chance of connecting to a BBS when I was a child.
Here is a story for you kids.
2 Get LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary – by Jason Scott
This is a two disk documentary. Both available on YouTube bellow.
ARS Technica: Looking back at the Infocom era: A review of Get Lamp
3 AT&T Tech Channel on YouTube
This is a gem if you wish to know more about the famous Bell Labs and its contributions.
Go to the channel and order the videos by Oldest.
Some of the most popular:
▶️ The Transistor: a 1953 documentary, anticipating its coming impact on technology
▶️ AT&T Archives: Microworld (Bonus Edition)
▶️ AT&T Archives: The UNIX Operating System
▶️ UNIX: Making Computers Easier To Use – AT&T Archives film from 1982, Bell Laboratories
▶️ AT&T Archives: Submarine Cable Systems Development
4 A Visit to id Software (November 1993) – by John Romero
I stumbled upon this video on YouTube, it is actually from Romero himself on his Vimeo profile.
A Visit to id Software (November 1993) – by John Romero
5 The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters – by Seth Gordon
This is an odd ball. Cringe defines it well. The game is from 1981 but the doc is about a “competitive” gaming scene in the early 2000s.
Not sure about the legality of this link:
6 Indie Game: The Movie – by Pajot & Swirsky
I will put this here because at least to me, it portrays the time of the “indie game revolution”. I don’t particularly feel the people in the documentary portray the whole spectrum, but it’s entertaining.
7 From Bedrooms to Billions – by Caulfield & Caulfield
Haven’t watched this yet.
Not sure if legal:
8 General Magic – by Kerruish & Maude
Haven’t watched this yet.
The ideas that dominate the tech industry and our day to day lives were born at a secretive Silicon Valley start-up named ‘General Magic’, which spun out of Apple in 1990 to create the first handheld personal communicator (or “smartphone”).
9 Revolution OS – by J. T. Moore
Haven’t watched this yet.
About open source movement and free software.