Channel Showcase: Tom Scott

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Tom Scott is a man of many talents; he is a programmer, a YouTuber, a “geek comedian”, according to Wikipedia, and altogether a well-rounded, interesting individual. With over 400,000 subscribers, Tom Scott’s eponymous channel has been the place where Tom puts his variety of creations in the medium of film, although that isn’t the only medium he works in (he has also made many web-based projects over the years). Ever since 2006, a full decade ago, Tom Scott has created videos on a wide variety of topics, “general interest” being the only term I could think up to describe them.

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From language to travel to computers, Tom’s videos are all over the map in terms of their topics. Despite that, all of his videos are in some way educational, informative, interesting, and always entertaining. Tom has created many series of videos over the years, including; from his 17 video long series on grammar and language, titled “Tom’s Language Files“; a contest-like, gameshow fact-based podcast thingy called “Citation Needed”; a 121 video long, general interest series called “Things You Might Not Know”; and my personal favorite, Tom’s Talks and Sci-fi Shorts, a collection of talks given by Tom and some pretty ingenious shorts hypothesizing about what the future of the Internet and the world will be like.

The video above is an example of one such sci-fi short, in which Tom shows us a terrifying glimpse into a far-fetched, yet still possible, future. In it, corporations run the afterlife, and when you die your existence is only transferred to an ever worse, legally binding hell-like virtual world. The video documents what you first see after you die, your consciousness undergoing what is very similar to making an account on any one of the various online services or apps around today (except way more horrifying, the consequences including losing memories, being trapped in a world full of ads, and more).

Altogether, the video is a very interesting thought experiment on consciousness and uploading consciousness to computers, as well as very interesting and entertaining to watch. Many of his other videos in his sci-fi series are also dark, yet thought-provoking and fascinating, including his video on a possible future in the government possible increasingly invasive search for terrorists, a video about humans from an intelligent, slightly hostile alien’s perspective, and more. Just these videos alone would be enough to convince me to subscribe, but as I said before, Tom creates a wide variety of subjects and in a wide variety of styles. If you like language, computers/programming, travel, or simply general interest facts and stories, Tom Scott has made a (most likely great) video for you.

 

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