Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise Playlist (Ages 15-17)

The Patel family prays in their apartment morning and night, using their cell phones and their laptop computers to connect with live-streaming from Hindu temples around the world.

As Yoko loses control of her body to Lou Gerrig's Disease, she prepares for her future by learning to operate (through eyeblinking) a "proxy" robot that goes out into the world for her, when she can no longer leave her Tokyo apartment.

"Incredible Miracle" is a team of teenage boys who are world champion e-sports (competitive video gaming) players. They live, work and train on video games together in a highrise compound in central Seoul, often not leaving the premises for days on end.

Cathy, who lives on her rural property outside St. John’s NFLD, has an aging mother who lives in Ottawa.  Instead of sending her to a home, Cathy had several wifi connected sensors installed in her mum’s home and is able to keep tabs on her mother.

In the absence of timely government emergency response to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy,  one woman turns to google docs to organize the relief efforts of volunteers going door-to-door, floor-by-floor in the highrises of south Brooklyn, to aid Russian Jewish Seniors trapped in their own homes.

For 22 years inside a federal prison, Alvin had no access to a computer or the internet. So when he was released last year, he had decades worth of digital learning to catch up on: google, email, facebook and twitter. And now, through facebook, he has found his long lost son.

Through the internet, Ling has arranged for herself a "mock marriage" to a gay man, to conceal her lesbian identity from her parents, with whom she lives in a highrise apartment in Guangzhou, China's 3rd largest city.

New online tools have begun to offer a way to bridge the divide between a new generation of Armenians and Azerbaijanis activists brought up unable to remember the time when both lived side by side together in peace.  One of them is Ahmed Mukhtar, a 28-year-old Internally Displaced Person (IDP) from Aghdam. Working as a photojournalist, Mukhtar photographs the plight of other IDPs in Azerbaijan, and also trains IDP children in using photography to document their lives. In a country where the mainstream media is government-controlled, the Internet is Mukhtar’s only way to publish images.

John is a 30-year old that operates PC Clinic Air, a wireless Internet café in his apartment building.  He wants to provide Internet access at an affordable rate, and considers his work in the public interest. Currently, his customers pay half of what they would with any of Ghana’s major network providers. In addition, his clients save the cost of purchasing a modem, or Internet stick. People use the Wi-Fi on their mobile phones, laptops or smart TVs.