The Hard Drive
The Hard Drive - science geeks in Zurich
What is a scientist? what is a science geek? what do they do, and why do we finance them to do it? And do people in Zurich realize that their city hosts possibly the highest density of geeks-pro-capite in Europe -- perhaps the world?
The hard drive is where geeks store their work, music, books, emails -- essentially their entire life. It is also the mysterious drive that leads them to choose a steep and difficult path towards a permanent sense of incompleteness and dissatisfaction.
"The Hard Drive" explores the everyday life of Zurich scientists, from prize-winning enthusiasts traveling all over the world to frustrated graduate students spending the best years of their life in dark underground labs. Lapo Boschi, himself a geek from the ETH, interviews his colleagues, forcing them to explain what they do in a way that even a normal person can manage to understand.
Bruno Vaz is a veterinarian, Alessandra a neuropharmacologist, but they both use biology to study rare diseases of genetic origin, whose mechanism is not yet clearly understood: cockayne syndrome and familial hemiplegic migraine. Bruno looks at cells, Alessandra experiments on mice. It quickly becomes clear that your reporter is completely ignorant of biology, genetics and all that, but he tries very hard to understand.
jeden zweiten Samstag im Monat
What is a scientist? what is a science geek? what do they do, and why do we finance them to do it? And do people in Zurich realize that their city hosts possibly the highest density of geeks-pro-capite in Europe -- perhaps the world?
The hard drive is where geeks store their work, music, books, emails -- essentially their entire life. It is also the mysterious drive that leads them to choose a steep and difficult path towards a permanent sense of incompleteness and dissatisfaction.
"The Hard Drive" explores the everyday life of Zurich scientists, from prize-winning enthusiasts traveling all over the world to frustrated graduate students spending the best years of their life in dark underground labs. Lapo Boschi, himself a geek from the ETH, interviews his colleagues, forcing them to explain what they do in a way that even a normal person can manage to understand.
Bruno Vaz is a veterinarian, Alessandra a neuropharmacologist, but they both use biology to study rare diseases of genetic origin, whose mechanism is not yet clearly understood: cockayne syndrome and familial hemiplegic migraine. Bruno looks at cells, Alessandra experiments on mice. It quickly becomes clear that your reporter is completely ignorant of biology, genetics and all that, but he tries very hard to understand.
jeden zweiten Samstag im Monat