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The Digital Human

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Aleks Krotoski explores the digital world

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Digital Human: Series 9

The Digital Human: Series 9: Episode 2: Home

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Factual: Science & Nature

Home

Episode 2

Episode 2: Home

Series 9

BBC Radio 4 - The Digital Human, Series 9, Home

Aleks Krotoski asks whether home can be anywhere you can go online.

Aleks Krotoski explores what makes a space a place and how digital technology is influencing the places we call home.

In The Digital Human: Home Aleks asks what turns a space into a place and whether we really need bricks and mortar anymore, when home can be anywhere you can go online.

Aleks visits Porter Ranch just outside of Los Angeles where residents were told to evacuate because of a gas leak. Linda Matthies decided to stay despite fears over her health. Her sense of home focuses strongly on the comforts of home and her many possessions acquired over her lifetime. Her sense of home is very much tied up with the physical.

In contrast Josh Surtees was able to create a digital space that he could call home. Josh moved to Trinidad to work as a journalist. He fell in love and when his girlfriend moved to London after two months they created a virtual home through skype and successfully continued their relationship.

In Downtown LA Aleks meets Elvina Beck a digital nomad who has started a company allowing millennials to rent a communal pod with wifi access that they can make home. For her home is mobile, as long as there is online access, home can be anywhere.

Architect Sam Jacobs understands the important link between home and identity. He argues that the division between the private realm iof home and the public realm is breaking down because people are exposing their identities online. Home is now one of the places that you can in fact broadcast your identity to a much wider audience.

Travel writer Pico Iyer realised when he saw his home in California burn to the ground that home is not about bricks or mortar or access to wifi but should be found within ourselves.

The idea of the 21st entury house, is not actually that old so will digital technologies change how and were we decide to live in the future.

Produced by Kate Bissell.

The Digital Human: Series 9

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Aleks Krotoski explores life in the digital age.

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The Digital Human

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Episode 2: Home

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