Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier

Frontline has created a fascinating website to accompany its television broadcast of the documentary Digital Nation. The website was launched ten months prior to the broadcast, and includes a producer's blog, as well as a feature called "Your Stories", that allowed users of the site to participate in the process of making the documentary. Interestingly, visitors can "Watch Online", the 90-minute video, and then read a roundtable discussion by some of the participants in the film. To the right of the comments by the participants is the "Your Thoughts" area, which contains posts by visitors to the site. The tabs near the top left of the homepage contain short videos which expound on the 90-minute video. The topics of the tabs include "Living Faster", "Waging War", and "Virtual Worlds". Within each tab are several subsections, and each subsection contains about half a dozen videos. In the "Living Faster" tab, under the subsection "Where Are We Headed", there is a brief video called "Your Brain on Google", which compares a brain scan of a person when reading a book to when they are using Google. The results are surprising.