The full series is on Archive:

https://archive.org/details/bbc-connections-1978/Connections...

It still holds up for the most part, though of course some of the takes, being almost 50 years old, may seem a bit quaint. It's certainly worth watching the first series at least start to finish. Burke is an interesting guy.

The late 1970's were the golden age of documentaries: Connections, Cosmos, Civilization, The Ascent of Man and Attenborough's Life on Earth.

Perhaps it's just me, but modern documentaries are rather dumbed down?

As a side note: Quite ironic that he ends up pointing to a rocket propelled mostly by solid fuels.

I watched this show religiously as a kid (by then in reruns in the early 90s), along with Star Trek: TNG, Jeopardy, and playing Civilization for PC. The most formative years of my life were spent absorbing as much science, technology, and history as my growing brain could muster. I think that's why I'd grown up to be so optimistic about the future.

I think there's still a lot of room for optimism, despite all of the pessimism in the media, and I'm not even talking about AI. There are a ton of other things which have benefitted enormously from ubiquitous, efficient, and powerful computing that hardly get talked about anymore, we've come to take it all for granted.

I grew up watching Cosmos and Connections (and a bunch of stupid prime time on the one TV in the house and something like 5 clear channel [PBS being the best]).