Biology holds out the promise of making man in any image we choose -or so we are led to believe Tonight's film of research in laboratories all over the world confirms that scientists are rapidly extending their power to intervene in the most critical stages of human life and reproduction. What could we do with that power? What should we do? Those appearing include: Dr. M. C. Chang Professor Erwin Chargaff Professor Barry Commoner Dr. Francis Crick Professor Henry Harris Professor C. H. Waddington
Your future is being created now - for better or for worse? How close are we to constructing the robot of the future? Will there be one in every house? How human will It look? These are some of the questions this programme tries to answer. Isaac Asimov, science fiction writer and prophet of the Robot age, introduces the programme and predicts a future in which man and robots form a combined culture, a culture in which, to use his own words, 'mankind may want robots not only as helpers and servants but also as friends, as something with which they can identify' Towards Tomorrow explores laboratories in England and America to discover how near scientists and engineers are to turning Asimov's science fiction into science fact.
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Are we insane or just pathologically normal? Shall we cure disturbed people or recover them? Help! Psychiatry means cure of the soul. If there is no soul, what do we curet Taking part are psychiatrists and patients; and the programme includes the work of two hospitals who approach the same end, the cure of mental illness, in completely different ways Research by Tony Parker Film editor, James Colina Series editor, MAX MORGAN-WITTS Produced by Roy BATTERSBY
If I could but see a day of it ... A day in the year 2000-plus was the time William Morris had in mind when he voiced our common yearning to glimpse the future in his Utopian novel News from Nowhere. Now, Utopia, the ultimate in human folly or human hope, is subject to scrutiny by high-powered government forecasting agencies-think tanks-and by behavioural psychiatrists Their predictions come closer to Orwell's 1984 than William Morris 's dream world and seem to support the hippie philosophy that a dropping-out of our technologically orientated society is the only way to achieve Utopia. Prophecies, pleasant and unpleasant, are contributed by: Dr. J. Bronowski Herman Kahn and Tony Wiener Lewis Mumford Professor B. F. Skinner Viscount Weymouth and the members of a unique community of drop-outs in the Colorado Mountains William Morris is played by Frank Littlewood Commentary spoken by John Stockbridge
One breath of a nerve gas will kill you ... and so will a drop of it through the skin. One plane-load of it could wipe out the people of a city like Leeds without destroying the buildings. One plane flying along the coast of Britain could spray enough germs in one night to infect much of the population of London ... they would not know they had been infected and they would all become ill at about the same time. What are the facts behind statements like these? How have chemical and biological weapons come to equal nuclear weapons as potential mass killers? What protection is there against them? What, if anything, prevents their being used? What goes on inside Britain's secret research centre at Porton Down in Wiltshire? Tonight's documentary film sets out to provide an answer to these questions. Series editor, MAX MORGAN-WITTS Narrator, ALAN DOBIE
Waste of every kind is on the increase, polluting the earth. The volume of refuse alone will double in twenty years. Unless we do something, cities will be engulfed in their own wastes. Should we store our wastes in huge artificial mountains for possible future re-use? Or re-design our own homes to produce less waste? Waste can be eliminated. But there are psychological problems. Film from Britain, France, America, and Sweden shows what is being done in the eleventh-hour bid to avoid the waste-high society. Series editor, MAX MORGAN-WITTS Written and produced by MICHAEL WEIGALL
Some quite fantastic designs for the cities of the twenty-first century are already appearing on drawing boards all over the world. Advanced technology has now made it possible to build cities that are quite unlike anything anyone has lived in before Buckminster Fuller, Reyner Banham, Wilem Frischmann and Boyd Auger reveal in this filmed programme their ideas about what the city of the future will be like. Their projects, and the whole concept of cities are examined from the human angle by: Lewis Mumford, author of The Culture of Cities with Dr. Terence Lee, psychologist Tom Marcus, Professor of Building Science Dr. John Calhoun of the United States National Institute of Health The Rev. Chad Varah, Founder of the Samaritans The question is will the cities of the future be worth living in? Will we learn from our past mistakes? Or will the psychoses that affect today's cities merely become super-psychoses when we start building super-cities?
The 'Gospel of Work' is hard to shake off. When we get the chance of more free time, many of us shy away. Perhaps we enjoy our time off only because we know it must come to an end. But what will happen when it doesn't? Professor Dennis Gabor says the age of leisure, if it comes too early, could be as big a potential threat to society as the atom-bomb. Some Britons already have a four-day week. In Lancashire there's even now a three-day week. Industrial change will bring more spare time for everybody. Are we ready or will leisure mean more of us seeking refuge in alcohol, drugs, and fantasy? From new-style educational holiday camps to giant 'fun bubbles' to roll around in, the battle's on to liven us up on the threshold of the age of leisure. Commentary spoken by Michael Flanders
100,000-1: according to some metal men those are the odds against finding a new metal mine. But unless we begin finding unprecedented amounts of minerals very soon, by the turn of the century industry could grind to a halt for lack of raw materials. The odds have got to be shortened -- not only by prospecting every square yard of the earth but by exploring the deepest parts of the oceans, possibly even the moon. The only hope is that technology, which created the problem of exploding metal consumption, will also create the means to solve it -- by providing new tools to tip the balance in the prospector's favour.
Science-fiction writers have been trying for decades to prepare us for 2001 and beyond. As more of yesterday's science-fiction comes true, we are forced to believe that some of the far-fetched prophecies being written now will also come true. Not only science-fiction writers like Isaac Asimov and imaginative film-makers like Stanley Kubrick, but professionals in conclaves called Think Tanks, are now busy on what is becoming big business — prediction. Tonight's documentary presents Interwoven patterns of prophecy from all these sources, plus the reactions and visions of those who must come to terms with the 2001 that prophets predict - the children of today who will have to live In it.
A guy who can't fit into society and steals - you lock up in prison. Kind of forget him until he steals again. Then you lock him up again. A PRISONER At a time when our prisons are overcrowded and longer and longer sentences are being imposed Tony Parker examines the effect of imprisonment on men now, and what this means for the future. The purpose of the training and treatment of convicted prisoners shall be to encourage and assist them to lead a good and useful life. THE PRISON RULES: RULE 1 What sort of life do prisoners lead inside? How does imprisonment change them - does it in fact help them to lead a good and useful life? First-hand evidence from former prisoners, prison officers, a prison Governor, and others concerned with the treatment of offenders.
The people of the twenty-first century are being fashioned now in our primary schools. Our boys and girls will have to live with the tempestuous uncertainties foretold for their world. They will have to learn how to do so-and that begins at school. What is going on in the classroom? Is progressive teaching a menace-or can it produce men and women better able to control and live within their society? This programme goes to the heart of this argument, which is about how children learn, and how parents and teachers are helping them in our primary schools. It is solely concerned with State primary schools because that is where the real educational revolution is happening. Series editor, Max Morgan-Witts Produced by GLYN JONES