#DUPE# (2019): Season 1, Episode 3 - The Dawn of Digital - full transcript

Bush: How many do
the computer stuff;

How many
are computer literate?

Narrator: In 1989,

While a political
revolution unfolded
right before our eyes...

A tech revolution
hid in plain sight.

The military took its secret
weapon to new heights.

Reporter (over tv):
The network is called the
global positioning system.

Narrator: The technology
on board, would take
life in a new direction.

Parkinson: Certainly when
it went into cell phones,
the whole world changed.

Narrator: Also in
1989, the new toy kids
couldn't put down...

Sullivan: This is
called game boy.



Narrator: Helped inspire
what none of us can put down.

Jobs: And we are
calling it, iphone.

Narrator: But the year's
biggest breakthrough.

Reporter (over tv): An online
network called internet.

Narrator: Changed everything.

Smith: I don't know that I
would still have a career had
it not been for the internet.

Narrator: But with these
incredible leaps came some
unintended consequences.

Reporter (over tv):
Google may be tracking your
location even if you told the

Company not to.

People who spent the
most time on social media,
had the highest likelihood

Of feeling socially isolated.

Spitz: People can find
like-minded people.

That creates a
feeling of community.

The flip side is, do we
really know those people?



(theme music plays)

Gumble: Back now
56 past, I wasn't
prepared to translate that.

As I was doing
that little tease.

That little mark with the "a"
and then the ring around it.

Woman: At?

Gumble: See that's
what I said.

Katie said she
thought it was about.

Couric: Yeah.

Gumble: What is
internet anyway?

Couric: Can you explain
what internet is?

Gumble: And
others can access it.

Narrator: It's
hard to imagine a time
when something called

The internet was unknown.

Today anyone can use the
internet to make a purchase,
express an opinion or,

Or look up the
definition of epic fail.

But in 1989, only a few had
access to this powerful tool.

Spitz: 1989 I was working
for a science and technology
organization, so yes,

We were aware of the internet,

I don't think that
was necessarily typical
of the average person.

Ferleger: The internet
was closed and
it was non-commercial.

It was the government
and a bunch of nerds who were
communicating with each other.

I don't think anybody had
any idea where it would
be in this day and age.

Narrator: When the
internet began in 1969,

It wasn't even
called the internet.

'arpanet' was confined to
the military and academics.

But thanks to a british
computer scientist, it was
about to go mainstream.

In 1989, tim berners-lee
first proposed an open network

That would link
vast amounts of
information together and

Make it all accessible
from any computer.

From his jumble of
tech jargon, the world
wide web was born.

Tim: 1989, and the
internet already existed in
that you could send email.

But there was no websites,
so there was no htp,
there was no html,

There was no space or
things you could click through.

I imagined a system
where you could just
click from one to the other,

And that was so compelling
that I decided that I
wanted to build it.

Spitz: The invention and
the development of the browser
and then the search engines is

Really what created
the ability to connect to
all of those information

Sources and sites.

It changed everything.

Smith: I benefited
tremendously from the internet.

I don't know that I would
still have a career had it
not been for the internet,

Because that's where
I found my fans.

A friend of mine said,
'you should go to an
internet cafe and look at one

Of the clerks websites.'

And, I said,
'what is that?'

And he said, 'it's tough
to explain, but there are
people who like your movie

So much they build
websites around it.

And so, I went to the internet
cafe and a website came up.

I'd never seen this
before in my entire life,
so my first description of

A website was like,
it's like a magazine,
but it's on television.

It to me, was
everything I wanted.

It put you directly in
contact with the fanbase.

Affleck: Wish I held on to
a little piece of that thing,
because the buzz he indicated

That movie is going to
make some huge bank.

Mews: What buzz?

Affleck: The internet buzz.

Mews: What the (bleep)
is the internet?

Narrator: Of course you
didn't need to be a
celebrity to love this

New thing
called the internet.

At the very least, we
no longer had to wait
for the morning paper...

Or buy as many stamps.

Man (over computer):
You've got mail!

Narrator: But even before
most of us discovered this
incredible new platform,

The digital frontier was
already filled with outlaws.

Rasch: It's natural as people
and resources start finding
their way onto the internet

That people are gonna
start to use that for
malicious purposes.

Narrator: And in 1989,

One man became
the early face of
internet crime when he was

Brought to justice
for creating the
first computer worm.

Pauley (over tv): Well,
government installations
and some of the nations most

Prestigious universities
are still trying to
assess the damage done

To their computer systems.

Reporter (over tv):
The virus spread
through 6,000 computers in a

Military computer network.

Rasch: I was working
on another computer
crime case when I got a

Phone call that said,
"the internet has gone down.

Someone has shut
down the internet."

The person who perpetrated
this internet worm was a
student named robert morris,

He was a graduate student
at cornell university
where he was working on a

Graduate degree in
computer science.

Mcafee: The computer virus,
and I've seen the code,

Was intended to
creep slowly across

The arpanet and
implant itself innocuously
in all these machines.

Rasch: He wanted to
find out how the internet
worked, and really,

Demonstrate that this
kind of thing could be done.

Mcafee: Computer virus
technology is a technology
that we currently do not have

A full mastery of, as was
demonstrated by the virus
that bob morris wrote.

Couric: A four year
old federal law against
computer tampering has

Produced its first conviction.

A jury in syracuse, new york

Returned a verdict of
guilty against former
graduate student robert morris.

Rasch: What we learned from
this worm was that computers
lost their innocence.

That was the year
we learned that the
internet was vulnerable,

That was the year we
learned that we had to
do something about it.

Narrator: But most of all,

The morris worm
previewed the digital
dangers of the future.

More time online, meant
more exposure to risk.

And the cyber-attacks
themselves would only
get more sophisticated.

Reporter (over tv): The
new indictment claims the
russian intelligence officers

Hacked the clinton campaign,

The dnc, and emails
of clinton campaign
chairman john podesta.

Reporter 2 (over tv):
The secret service
is investigating a

Major data breach at target.

Reporter 3 (over tv): A
devastating hack crippling
one of the world's most

Powerful entertainment studios.

Glor: Facebook may have
mishandled data from more
than 50 million users.

Jones: Are we more vulnerable?

And the answer is yes because
we have more stuff online
that's more accessible

To more people in ways that
we don't understand.

And also, you're not the
custodian of that information.

Ferleger: It's a
blessing and a curse.

It opens you up to a world
of people you didn't know,
it's good for business,

It's good for marketing,
it's good for communication.

But that led to some
unintended consequences.

Narrator: Another
hi-tech tool born in
1989 would come with

Unforeseen repercussions.

This one made it impossible
for us to get lost...

And impossible
for us to hide.

In the 1880s we still
rode a horse and buggy...

By the 1980s, we were
flying through space.

But in 1989, the us military
began to transform every
mode of transportation.

Not with a new vehicle,

But a new technology
that kept us moving
in the fast lane.

Parkinson: I was an
inertial navigation guy with
the united states air force.

My career intersected
something called 621-b,
which was a, a floundering

Air force study project,

That was attempting to
provide a very, very precise

Positioning system
for the world.

Narrator: In 1973,
brad parkinson was
charged with saving a

Us air force program designed
to modernize navigation.

Parkinson: The air force
did not want it.

So, the first step
was to assemble a
concept that made sense,

And then go
around and sell it.

The military needed
precision weapon delivery.

You could see that
the fashion of, of just
carpet bombing something,

You may have good intentions.

But if you're hitting
synagogues, or churches,
or schools, or hospitals,

You're not doing
what you should be doing.

We had put the system
together, we'd put the
satellites up, demonstrated

Pretty good accuracy,
now, pretty good,

In this case,
is a few meters.

It isn't what
you can do today.

The air force
tried to cancel it.

They didn't want to
spend any money on that.

They thought they were
navigating well enough.

Fortunately, there were
civil leaders that I had
developed a good bond with

Who could see
what this would do.

And they told the
air force,

"if you don't, I'm
gonna cancel a wing
of your airplanes."

That's how it was resolved.

Reporter (over tv):
This navy f4 on a bombing
run in arizona is testing

The air force's new
satellite
navigation system, navstar.

The system can
be used to tell
anyone where they are,

Where they're going.

And how soon
they'll get there.

It has almost
unlimited applications.

Narrator: By the early 80s
the navstar program paid off.

The united states
had gps technology.

No other nation did.

But that exclusivity would
have tragic consequences.

Parkinson: There was an
incident during reagan's
administration in which an

Airliner crossed the
kamchatka peninsula of russia,

Evidently because
of a navigation error,

And got shot down.

Everyone died.

Narrator: When the soviets
shot down a south korean
airliner that had

Accidentally entered
its airspace, cold
war tensions rose.

Reagan: This
crime against humanity
must never be forgotten,

Here or throughout the world.

Narrator: But an opportunity
for diplomacy emerged.

America's president decided
to release the gps technology
it had developed to everyone.

Parkinson: Reagan said we're
going to give it to the world.

It's our gift to humanity.

Narrator: But
reagan's directive
wouldn't really take flight

Until the end of the decade,

When the next
version of gps would
become operational.

Man (over radio):
We have liftoff of the
first delta ii and navstar

Global positioning
system satellite.

Parkinson: There was the
launching of a operational
satellite that was quite an

Important milestone
in February of '89.

And after that we
put up a lot of them.

Man (over radio): Liftoff
of the 10th delta ii navstar

Global positioning
system satellite...

Woman (over radio): The
25th in the mark ii series...

Man (over radio): The
gps 2-27 satellite...

Narrator: The world now
had a fully formed network
of space-age monitors

Soaring above the planet.

An interconnected man-made
constellation that mapped
and patrolled the

Earth like never before.

And for those in the american
military who had once doubted
the navstar project,

Gps would quickly
prove its worth.

Parkinson: We were
anticipating a need
called a desert war.

Rather: If it comes to war,
iraq will of course,

Have the advantage
of fighting on
its home territory.

Plus possible advantages
in tanks and artillery.

The american answer to
that is once again supposed
to be superior technology.

A satellite network designed
to guide us forces around
the vast tractless desert.

Reporter (over tv):
The network is called the
global positioning system.

Parkinson: It was a great
mystery to the iraqis when the
americans came around out of

The desert in places the
iraqis couldn't navigate.

Narrator: Gps
equipment was mounted
onto coalition aircraft,

And even vehicles
on the ground.

Man: We were able to attack
targets very discreetly.

We did not carpet
bomb downtown baghdad.

We took special care to
make sure we attacked
only military targets and

We attacked them
quite precisely.

Parkinson: And all of a sudden
the technology of space craft,

Space oriented
navigation was appreciated.

Narrator:
Frozen concentrate...

Duct tape...

The jeep...

Like many of the military's
greatest hits, gps ultimately
wound up in the hands

Of the rest of us...

Showing up in
cars in the mid 90s, and in
1999 the first commercially

Available gps phone was
introduced in europe.

A flood of gps-enabled mobile
phones quickly followed.

Parkinson: Certainly when
it went into cell phones,
oh, the whole world changed.

Reporter (over tv): 50
million drivers across the us
now use waze to avoid traffic.

Reporter 2 (over tv): Uber,
it's the app that lets you
order a car on demand.

Reporter 3 (over tv): Google
is about to launch the first
self-driving taxi service.

Parkinson: It is
suddenly ubiquitous and
simultaneously stealthy.

As a result you suddenly
found all these applications
that you never knew of before.

The reason it's a
revolution is it's free,
and it does so many things

For so many people.

It's used for scientific
purposes, farming,
construction, airplanes.

There's all kinds of things.

But there's an issue of
privacy with gps that
is pretty profound.

There are issues of using
it to guide bad things.

To track a citizen
of the united states
without his consent.

But compare that to
the 61 billion dollars of
direct economic value,

Not including safety of life
or safety of air flight
or any of those things.

Oh sure, yeah,
it's a slam dunk.

Narrator: So how did our
cell phones end up with gps,

The internet, and so
many other things that have

Nothing to do
with making calls?

One of 1989's most popular
toys helped pave the way for
the all-in-one mobile device.

Smith: This thing
is addicting.

Rogers: Having a portable
device that you can take
with you anywhere,

Play on the train,
play on the bus, that
revolutionized gaming.

We grow up and we
stop playing games, we
start doing other things,

But the device is still there,
it's just gotten way better.

And not exactly mobile,

But they were
becoming commonplace
outside the office,

And their days as clunky,
over-priced calculators
were numbered.

Spitz: The thing
that did happen in
the late 80s of course

Is the personal computer.

The microprocessor was
developed and packaged
into a size that could be

Brought into the home.

Narrator: And while
we didn't go from a
commodore 64 on our desk

To an iphone 10 in
our hand overnight,

The path to portability
began in 1989, when we
started taking a

Child's toy with us...

Wherever we went.

Jones: The game boy itself
was the first, multi-use,
by that you can change games,

You can do other things,
handheld personal
device that anyone had.

Rogers: Once the game boy came
out you no longer had to go
home or to your friend's house

To play a game, you could
just play a game anywhere
you wanted to play.

Narrator: But for game boy to
be a game changer, it needed
more than just good hardware,

And video game designer
henk rogers was about to
stumble on that one thing

That would turn game boy
into a phenomenon.

Rogers: I traveled around
the world looking for games
through all the trade shows,

Including the consumer
electronic show in las vegas,

Where I found tetris.

So in 1989 as the
year begins we had just
started publishing tetris

On personal computer platforms.

Tetris is a game that
could be played by anybody.

People who don't play games
are all playing this game.

Game boy came out in
japan and nintendo was
trying to figure out when and

How to launch it in the u.S.

I went to visit the president
of nintendo of america,
mr. Arakawa, and I said,

"mr. Arakawa, you know, you're
probably thinking to include
some game with game boy.

Tetris is the perfect game."

And on a handshake,
we made a deal.

I mean, that
revolutionized gaming.

Announcer: Now you can
have all the power
and excitement of

Nintendo right in the
palm of your hand.

Introducing game boy!

Narrator: Game boy, bundled
with tetris made it's us
debut in the summer of 1989,

And was an instant smash.

Man: On gameboy, when you're
dealing with 1.5 million units
in the matter of a few months,

Obviously you have a
phenomenon starting there.

Announcer: It's going to
be a nintendo christmas.

Narrator: Like the vcr
and the walkman before it,
the game boy had turned an

Entire industry on its head.

How we played games,
and where we played them
would never be the same.

Rasch: You know, when
you think about a desktop
in 1989, you'd have a rolodex,

A typewriter,
cassette recorder,
telephone, stereo system,

All that would
sit on your desk.

Now all of that
fits in your pocket.

Ferleger: The game
boy opening up the doors
to a more portable world

Was making things exciting and
easier for everybody around.

Narrator: So once arcades
started fitting in our
pockets, other magical

Electronic bricks
wouldn't be far off.

By the early 90s we had
digital notepads and laptops.

And soon everything, from
cameras to stereos became
must-have digital companions

Like the game boy.

Until someone decided,
maybe we had one too
many portable gadgets.

Jobs: An ipod, a phone,
and an internet communicator.

And we are calling it, iphone.

Narrator: The original
iphone was a game-changer
for almost every industry,

And it turned apple
into one of the world's
most valuable companies.

And it wasn't long before
gaming, gps, and of
course the internet would come

Standard on every mobile devic.

All of 1989's tech marvels
bundled together, forever.

Jones: Miniaturization,
personalization, and mobility
and connectedness are the

Things we all now expect.

Narrator: Today,
we depend on these digital
companions for everything.

And the irony is
we're connected to the
entire world, but often,

We're not paying
attention to it.

Blitzer: There is the picture.

During the three and a
half hour hearing at one
point you were playing a

Little poker on your iphone.

Ferleger: It's just sad
this human interaction
is being depleted.

It's the most connected
we've ever been, but I would
also argue that it's the most

Disconnected we've ever been.

Smith: You could
point to how technology
has isolated us more

From one another in real time.

It has given dark
pockets to people who
function in the shadows.

It's created esteem issues
in a generation of children
who can't feel good about

Themselves unless a bunch
of strangers hit a little like
and tell them they're okay.

So yeah there's a downside.

Good side though is,
everybody's in touch.

Spitz: The fact that people
can find like-minded people

Creates a feeling of community

And can eliminate the
feeling of aloneness in a
way that's pretty powerful.

Of course, the flip side is,
do we really know those people
and how does that actually

Affect us in terms
of our interpersonal and
psychological development?

And I don't know
the answers to that.

What I do know is that
it's not going to change.

That the pace of technology
change has been on an
exponential curve

Since the beginning of time and
it's not slowing down.

So, like it or not, we
are hurdling into this
future and it's important that

We understand it.

Rogers: We're losing
that little bit of personal
communication, but what we're

Gaining is collective
consciousness.

If I have a question
I'll post it on facebook
and I'll get answers from

All around the planet.

If everybody has the
power to be able to find
whatever they need to find,

That's a good thing
for the human race and
for the future of humanity.

Captioned by cotter
captioning services.