The title of this video won't be exactly right. It only updates every few minutes at most, and besides, YouTube doesn't update its view counts in real time anyway. So, don't bother refreshing and refreshing and refreshing. You won't actually be able to see it ticking up second by second. If it's actually 100% spot on, it's a miracle, but if it's close, then the code I've written is still working. But at some point, that code will break and the title of this video will slip more and more out of touch with reality. This is the story of how I made that changing title work, why it used to be a lot easier to make things like that work, and how all this ties in to the White Cliffs of Dover and the end of the universe. Now, I'm not going to talk about the exact details of my code here. It is not the important part because code is just incredibly dull on camera. But, big picture, if you're automating a job like that, there are two main approaches you could take. First, you could write something that pretends to be a human. Not in some Blade Runner replicant way, but you could run a system that loads up the YouTube video page, reads the number of views, and then goes to the video manager, changes the title, and hits save. That's actually not too tricky to do. Screen-scrapers have been built to do things like that for decades. And that's a fairly innocent use of a screen-scraper, but if you can write code to change a title, then you could also write code that signs up for loads of new accounts, or spams people, or sends out messages trying to steal personal information. That's why you see those I'm not a robot checkboxes. Which aren't impossible to defeat by any means, but they make screen-scraping like that much, much, much more difficult. And plus, it's an approach that'll break quickly. Every time one of the pages that's being scraped gets redesigned, you will have to rewrite your code. But for a long time, the people who build web services like YouTube have recognized that there are legitimate reasons for letting code interact with their systems, like uh pulling analytics data into a spreadsheet or uh letting captioning services add subtitles to videos quickly and automatically, or you might want to hook multiple web services together to automatically tweet when a new video goes up or ask your voice assistant to search for a playlist. That can and should all be done with code. So behind the scenes, nearly every major web service has an API, an Application Programming Interface. It's a way for bits of code to pass data and instructions back and forth between services safely, without having to deal with all the complicated visual stuff that humans need. So, when I want my code to change a video title, I don't ask it to open up a web browser. Instead, it sends a single request to YouTube. Here's the video ID, here's the stuff to change, here's my credentials to prove that I'm allowed to do that. Bundle that all up, send it over. And YouTube sends back a single answer. Hopefully, it's a response code of 200, which means okay, uh with confirmation of what the video's data has changed to. But if there's some problem with that request, it'll send back some other status number and an error message about what went wrong. Uh, I can write code to handle those errors, or for something simple like this, I can just have it fail and log it somewhere so I can deal with it later. No typing, no clicking on things, no pretending to be a human. One request out, one reply back. At least that's how it's meant to work. This idea that web services could interact with each other through code was amazing when it first became popular. It became Web 2.0, a buzzword that is now more than 15 years old. And honestly, the Web 2.0 years were some of the most optimistic times on the web. All these new startups were making sure that they could interchange data with each other. So, uh maybe in the future you could see your friend's Facebook statuses on your fridge, uh or lights could flash uh to warn you if your bus was arriving early. The web would be all about data, and we could make all sorts of things of our own to understand it and control it and shape it. It was going to be the age of mashups. Take data and do interesting things with it. I built so many things in the days of Web 2.0, so many little web toys that took data from one place and showed it in weird ways. And the most ridiculous, over-the-top tool that I loved to build with was called Yahoo Pipes. You didn't need to write any code to make a mashup with that. You could just click and drag boxes on a screen to make a flowchart, and it would all be done for you. Yahoo would run it all on their servers for free. I made a thing called Star Wars Weather. It was a really simple web page. Uh it would show you the weather forecast by comparing it to a planet from Star Wars. I had a million people visit that site in one day at its peak. Uh a few people genuinely used it to get the weather every morning. I got lovely emails from them. And and all the processing was done in the background through Yahoo Pipes. I didn't have to pay for some expensive server or pay for access to the weather data. There didn't seem to be any limit either. Yahoo just handled it because this was Web 2.0 and that was the right thing to do. And, you know, they'll they'll figure out how to make money later. Google Maps, that was free to build on, too. World-class maps just to play with. I built a terrible racing game on top of it, put it in my own site, loads of people played it. I didn't pay them a penny. None of those free services exist now. And in hindsight, it was never sustainable. See, when Twitter launched, it wasn't pitched as just an app or a website. Twitter was a platform, a messaging service. You could use their website to read and send tweets, sure, or you could write code that used the API that looked at tweets, that reacted to them, or even wrote tweets of its own. It was so quick, so open that anyone with a little coding experience could make stuff easily. Everything you could do on the Twitter website or later on the app, everything was available in the API for your code to play with. The first sign that something was wrong, for me at least, was the Red Scare bot. It appeared in August 2009 with the face of Joseph McCarthy as its avatar, and it watched the entire Twitter timeline, everything posted by everyone, because Twitter was small enough back then that you could do that. And if anyone mentioned communism or socialism, it would quote tweet them with not even really a joke, just a comment, just something that said, hey, pay attention to me. Hardly anyone followed it because, yeah, it was really annoying. Over the six years before it either broke or was shut down, that bot tweeted more than two million times. Two million utterly useless things added to Twitter's database. Two million times that someone was probably slightly confused or annoyed. Somehow, it survived even as Twitter's rules changed to explicitly ban look for a word and reply to it bots, even as countless other irritants got shut down. Search for every use of a word on Twitter and reply to it seems a lot more sinister these days in a world where social media shapes public opinion. We didn't really know what we were playing with. I built some Twitter bots myself, although they weren't quite as annoying as that. Uh my best one tweeted anytime someone edited Wikipedia from within the Houses of Parliament. Uh although I handed that uh political disaster over to someone else only a couple of days later when the press started calling because that was far too much hassle. And those were just the harmless ones. To be clear, there are still people out there making really good and interesting and fun Twitter bots. But bot has a whole new meaning now. Because it turns out you can't open up data access to just the good guys. I remember being really impressed with Facebook's API. It was brilliant. I could pull my data and all my friends' data and do weird, interesting things with it. We all know how that turned out. It's amazing in hindsight just how naively open everything was back then. APIs were meant to create this whole world of collaboration, and they did, at the cost of creating a whole lot of abuse. So, over the years, the APIs got replaced with simpler, more locked-down versions or were shut down entirely. Or in the case of Twitter, their website and app gained features like polls and group DMs, which were just never added to the API. You want to use those features? Oh, you're going to have to go to the official app or the official site because after all, if people can access the platform however they want with with code, how on earth are Twitter going to show them adverts? Nowadays, if you want to build something that connects to any major site, there will be an approval process so they can check in on what you're doing. And that connection could get shut down at any time. The Google Maps games that I made, the the Twitter toys, anything I ever built on Yahoo Pipes, they're all broken now and they can never come back. Pipes must have cost Yahoo so much money. Even if the service you're building on survives, there's still upkeep associated with making anything that connects to an API. Sooner or later, the server you're hosting your code on will fail, or there'll be a security patch that you'll have to install, or technology will move on enough that you'll need to update and rewrite the whole thing, and you'll have to ask yourself the question, is it actually worth it? Computer history museums are filled with the software and hardware that I grew up with and that I'm nostalgic for because they all ran on their own. They didn't need any ongoing support from an external company, but if what you're making relies on some other company's service, then archiving becomes very, very difficult. So for the time being, every few minutes, my code is going out to YouTube, asking how many views this video has, and then asking to update the title. Uh maybe it's still working as you watch this, but eventually, it will break. Eventually, so will YouTube. So will everything. Entropy, the steady decline into disorder that's a fundamental part of the universe. Entropy will get us all in the end. And that's why I chose to film this here. The White Cliffs of Dover are a symbol of Britain. They are this imposing barrier, but they're just chalk. Time and tide will wash them away a long time in the future. This too shall pass. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't build things anyway. Because just because something is going to break in the end, doesn't mean that it can't have an effect that lasts into the future. Joy, wonder, laughter, hope, the world can be better because of what you built in the past. And while I do think that the long-term goal of humanity should be to find a way to defeat entropy, I'm pretty sure no one knows where to start on that problem just yet. So, until then, try and make sure that the things you're working on pushes in the right direction. They don't have to be big projects, they might just have an audience of one. And even if they don't last, try to make sure that they leave something positive behind. And yes, at some point, the code that's updating the title of this video will break. Maybe I'll fix it, maybe I won't. But the code was never the important part.
A wide shot shows a pebble beach next to the sea, with large white chalk cliffs on the left under a clear blue sky.
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, natural sunlight
Text: "As with all my videos, this was recorded weeks before publication."
A man, Tom Scott, appears in the frame and begins speaking to the camera, gesturing with his right hand.
"The title of this video won't be exactly right. It only updates every few minutes at most, and besides, YouTube doesn't update its view counts in real time anyway."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, neutral expression
Tom Scott continues speaking, using both hands to gesture for emphasis, framing his words.
"You won't actually be able to see it ticking up second by second. If it's actually 100% spot on, it's a miracle, but if it's close, then the code I've written is still working."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, earnest expression
Tom Scott gestures with his right hand to the side as he explains the inevitable failure of the code.
"But at some point, that code will break and the title of this video will slip more and more out of touch with reality."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, serious expression
The camera cuts to a wide, low-angle shot of the white cliffs, panning slowly upwards.
"and how all this ties in to the White Cliffs of Dover and the end of the universe."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, natural sunlight
Text: "chapter 1 DON'T PRETEND TO BE HUMAN"
A large block of JavaScript code appears on the left side of the screen while Tom Scott continues to speak and gesture.
"Now, I'm not going to talk about the exact details of my code here. It is not the important part because code is just incredibly dull on camera."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, animated expression
Text: "// Above this, there's like a hundred lines of // boilerplate provided by Google // their API documentation is a bit out of date // and I had to copy-paste from Stack Overflow function makeAuthorizedCall(auth) { console.log('Calling videos.list...'); youtube.videos.list({ auth: auth, id: 'dQw4w9WgXcQ', part: 'id,snippet,statistics', }, function(err, response) { if (err) { console.log('The API returned an error: ' + err); return; } if (response.data.items) { console.log('Found video. Updating title...'); updateVideo(response.data.items[0], auth); } else { console.log('Zero items in list'); } }); }"
Tom Scott explains the concept of screen-scraping, using hand gestures to illustrate the process.
"First, you could write something that pretends to be a human. Not in some Blade Runner replicant way, but you could run a system that loads up the YouTube video page,"
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, focused expression
A mockup of a YouTube video page appears, with animated highlights showing how a screen-scraper would read the view count and edit the title.
"that loads up the YouTube video page, reads the number of views, and then goes to the video manager, changes the title, and hits save."
Setting: digital graphic — digital, even
People (1):
• standing, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, visible in a smaller window within the graphic
Text: "This Video Has X Views", "Y views • 6 Apr 2020", "ANALYTICS", "EDIT VIDEO"
Tom Scott continues his explanation, with the words 'screen-scrapers' appearing in large text over the video.
"Screen-scrapers have been built to do things like that for decades. And that's a fairly innocent use of a screen-scraper, but if you can write code to change a title,"
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking
Text: "screen-scrapers"
A reCAPTCHA 'I'm not a robot' checkbox appears and is checked, illustrating the anti-bot measure.
"That's why you see those I'm not a robot checkboxes. Which aren't impossible to defeat by any means, but they make screen-scraping like that much, much, much more difficult."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking
Text: "I'm not a robot"
Tom Scott talks about legitimate uses for code interacting with web services, gesturing broadly.
"But for a long time, the people who build web services like YouTube have recognized that there are legitimate reasons for letting code interact with their systems,"
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, looking earnest
As Tom Scott says 'API', the text appears on screen, followed by its full name.
"So behind the scenes, nearly every major web service has an API, an Application Programming Interface."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking
Text: "API Application Programming Interface"
Tom Scott explains the function of an API, waving his hand dismissively to represent ignoring the visual interface.
"without having to deal with all the complicated visual stuff that humans need. So, when I want my code to change a video title, I don't ask it to open up a web browser."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, clear and direct
A code snippet for a YouTube API call appears on screen, with different parts highlighted as Tom mentions them.
"Instead, it sends a single request to YouTube. Here's the video ID, here's the stuff to change, here's my credentials to prove that I'm allowed to do that."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, pointing to the graphic
Text: "youtube.videos.update({ resource: video, part: 'snippet', auth: auth, });"
Tom Scott explains the successful API response, and the text '200 OK' appears on screen.
"Hopefully, it's a response code of 200, which means okay, uh with confirmation of what the video's data has changed to."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, slight smile
Text: "200 OK"
Tom continues to list examples of API uses, gesturing with his hands.
"or uh letting captioning services add subtitles to videos quickly and automatically, or you might want to hook multiple web services together to automatically tweet when a new video goes up"
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking
Tom summarizes the API process, making a definitive gesture with his hand.
"No typing, no clicking on things, no pretending to be a human. One request out, one reply back. At least that's how it's meant to work."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, determined expression
Camera pans up the face of the white cliffs, showing their immense scale.
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, natural sunlight
Text: "chapter 2 UTOPIA"
Tom Scott speaks enthusiastically about Web 2.0, with the text 'Web 2.0' appearing on screen.
"This idea that web services could interact with each other through code was amazing when it first became popular. It became Web 2.0,"
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking with excitement
Text: "Web 2.0"
Tom Scott describes the utopian vision of Web 2.0, with an optimistic tone and gestures.
"All these new startups were making sure that they could interchange data with each other. So, uh maybe in the future you could see your friend's Facebook statuses on your fridge,"
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking with a hopeful expression
Tom reminisces about his own projects from the Web 2.0 era.
"I built so many things in the days of Web 2.0, so many little web toys that took data from one place and showed it in weird ways."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — smiling slightly
The Yahoo! and Yahoo! Pipes logos appear on screen as Tom introduces the tool.
"And the most ridiculous, over-the-top tool that I loved to build with was called Yahoo Pipes."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking with excitement
Text: "YAHOO! logo and Yahoo! pipes logo"
A screenshot of the Yahoo Pipes user interface is shown, demonstrating the drag-and-drop flowchart system for creating data mashups.
"You could just click and drag boxes on a screen to make a flowchart, and it would all be done for you. Yahoo would run it all on their servers for free."
Setting: digital graphic — digital, even
Text: "Traduction automatique des flux d'information (Yahoo Pipes IV) Laurent Moccozet (2012) // Creative Commons Attribution"
A series of screenshots from Tom's 'Star Wars Weather' website are shown, comparing real-world weather to planets like Bespin, Tatooine, and Hoth.
"I made a thing called Star Wars Weather. It was a really simple web page. Uh it would show you the weather forecast by comparing it to a planet from Star Wars."
Setting: digital graphic — digital, even
People (1):
• standing, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, visible in a smaller window within the graphic
Text: "IT'S LIKE BESPIN OUT THERE.", "IT'S LIKE TATOOINE OUT THERE.", "IT'S LIKE HOTH OUT THERE."
Tom speaks fondly of the success of his small web project, smiling as he recalls the user feedback.
"I had a million people visit that site in one day at its peak. Uh a few people genuinely used it to get the weather every morning. I got lovely emails from them."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — smiling warmly
A screenshot of another of Tom's old projects, 'Real World Racer,' a game built on the Google Maps API, is shown.
"Google Maps, that was free to build on, too. World-class maps just to play with. I built a terrible racing game on top of it, put it in my own site, loads of people played it."
Setting: digital graphic — digital, even
People (1):
• standing, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, visible in a smaller window within the graphic
Text: "REAL WORLD RACER"
Tom's expression turns more somber as he explains that these free, open services no longer exist.
"None of those free services exist now. And in hindsight, it was never sustainable."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — serious, slightly sad expression
The camera cuts to a wide shot of the beach, showing the line where the sea meets the shore and the expanse of the cliffs.
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, natural sunlight
Text: "chapter 3 THE FALL"
A screenshot of the 'RedScareBot' Twitter profile is overlaid on the left, while Tom explains its function.
"It appeared in August 2009 with the face of Joseph McCarthy as its avatar, and it watched the entire Twitter timeline, everything posted by everyone,"
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking with a serious, critical expression
Text: "Robot J. McCarthy @RedScareBot Joseph McCarthy claimed there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere."
Tom expresses surprise that the annoying bot was allowed to continue operating for so long.
"Somehow, it survived even as Twitter's rules changed to explicitly ban look for a word and reply to it bots, even as countless other irritants got shut down."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking with a look of disbelief
Tom reflects on the darker implications of such bots in the modern social media landscape.
"Search for every use of a word on Twitter and reply to it seems a lot more sinister these days in a world where social media shapes public opinion. We didn't really know what we were playing with."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — serious and contemplative
A screenshot of Tom's 'Parliament WikiEdits' Twitter bot appears, showing its purpose.
"I built some Twitter bots myself, although they weren't quite as annoying as that. Uh my best one tweeted anytime someone edited Wikipedia from within the Houses of Parliament."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking
Text: "Parliament WikiEdits @parliamentedits Tracks Wikipedia edits made from Parliamentary IPs. Idea: @tomscott, code: @edsu, server: @marksteward."
News headlines about malicious bot networks and data breaches appear on screen, illustrating the negative turn.
"But bot has a whole new meaning now. Because it turns out you can't open up data access to just the good guys."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking with a grim expression
Text: "NBC NEWS: Twitter pulls down bot network that pushed pro-Saudi talking points about disappeared journalist", "WIRED: Here's How Much Bots Drive Conversation During News Events"
A news headline about the Cambridge Analytica data breach appears, reinforcing the theme of lost innocence.
"We all know how that turned out. It's amazing in hindsight just how naively open everything was back then."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking with a rueful expression
Text: "The Guardian: Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach"
Tom explains the consequences of the abuse of open APIs, using his hands to show a closing or restricting motion.
"So, over the years, the APIs got replaced with simpler, more locked-down versions or were shut down entirely."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — serious and explanatory
Tom describes the current, more restrictive environment for developers working with APIs.
"Nowadays, if you want to build something that connects to any major site, there will be an approval process so they can check in on what you're doing."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking directly to camera
Tom reflects on the financial unsustainability of the old free services and the ongoing maintenance required for API-dependent projects.
"Pipes must have cost Yahoo so much money. Even if the service you're building on survives, there's still upkeep associated with making anything that connects to an API."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — contemplative expression
The camera pans up the white cliffs again, transitioning to the next chapter.
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, natural sunlight
Text: "chapter 4 HOPE"
The video cuts to footage from inside The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, UK. The camera pans across a display of vintage computers and monitors.
"Computer history museums are filled with the software and hardware that I grew up with and that I'm nostalgic for because they all ran on their own."
Setting: The Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK — indoor, fluorescent
Text: "The Centre for Computing History Cambridge, UK"
The shot cuts back to Tom Scott on the beach, who contrasts old standalone software with modern service-dependent applications.
"They didn't need any ongoing support from an external company, but if what you're making relies on some other company's service, then archiving becomes very, very difficult."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — serious, explanatory tone
Tom Scott makes a grand, philosophical point about the impermanence of all things, including YouTube and the universe itself, due to entropy.
"Eventually, so will YouTube. So will everything. Entropy, the steady decline into disorder that's a fundamental part of the universe. Entropy will get us all in the end."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — serious, profound expression
Tom gestures towards the white cliffs behind him, explaining their symbolic relevance to his point about impermanence.
"And that's why I chose to film this here. The White Cliffs of Dover are a symbol of Britain. They are this imposing barrier, but they're just chalk."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — speaking, looking towards the cliffs then back to the camera
Tom delivers a hopeful message, arguing for the value of creation despite its temporary nature.
"Time and tide will wash them away a long time in the future. This too shall pass. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't build things anyway."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — earnest and encouraging expression
Tom passionately lists the positive impacts of creation, his expression becoming more animated.
"Joy, wonder, laughter, hope, the world can be better because of what you built in the past. And while I do think that the long-term goal of humanity should be to find a way to defeat entropy,"
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — passionate and animated
Tom offers advice to the viewer, encouraging small, positive acts of creation.
"try and make sure that the things you're working on pushes in the right direction. They don't have to be big projects, they might just have an audience of one."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — sincere and encouraging
Tom brings the topic back to his initial premise, concluding that the act of creation was more important than the code itself.
"And yes, at some point, the code that's updating the title of this video will break. Maybe I'll fix it, maybe I won't. But the code was never the important part."
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, direct sunlight
People (1):
• standing, facing the camera, wearing black hooded parka over a light grey hoodie, blond, short, windswept hair — smiling slightly, conclusive expression
The video ends on a wide shot of the beach and cliffs, with social media handles appearing at the bottom of the screen.
Setting: Beach at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover — bright, natural sunlight
Text: "tomscott.com @tomscott /tomscott tomscottgo"