I think the first artistically ambitious TV show I remember coming out of the US was 'Twin Peaks'.
I've watched GBH a few times since it aired and I think it still holds up. Certainly give it a go if you get the chance. The original UK TV version of 'Edge of Darkness' is also still very, very watchable. Some remarkable scenes and performances.
And if you're so inclined you can pop over to Jura and have a nosey around the cottage Orwell wrote most of 1984 in :-) It's quite a pretty spot too :-)
Just to add some anecdotal pain... I recently bought my first audio book from Audible. I didn't realise it was a proprietary DRM'd format which has no sensible playback on Linux. So rather than spend time hacking together something to rip it, I ended up torrent'ing an mp3 of the book I'd just bought.
It's entirely put me off buying anything else from Audible :-/
I fondly remember playing 'Midi Maze' on the ST back in the 80's. LAN gaming has moved on a little, but I remember the joy and amazement of playing it :-)
I can relate to that - we used to have two related systems which couldn't talk to each other. So the solution was to print out (landscape, tiny font) 1000's of lines from one system, then sit with a ruler and highlighter pen re-typing it into the other. Day in, day out.
A newer system which replaced some of the functionality and cost many millions of dollars will only export as .xls and only import from .csv (no API offered). Better than typing it in by hand, but it still pains me every day :-/
I'm just down the road - I might pop past at some point for a nosey :-) The only things of note I'd ever spotted in Govan were Titan Props and Film City - live and learn!
We're a CERN connected site and originally 'only' had 10x10G feeds. When the first data started to come in the network guy was looking a bit worried and said "the plane's coming into land, and the runway isn't nearly long enough..."
I remember when the bus system was being privatised and watching the transport minister on the news explaining that he'd been 'inspired' by watching multiple double-decker buses crossing in front of parliament - all with no passengers and his feeling that 'something must be done'.
Yet London got left alone while the rest of the country got the full 'freedom' of the private sector. It's a tad annoying ;-)
Not really non-fiction, but Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is always a good read. Also if you're just interested in 'stuff', Plato's The Republic is very worth reading :
It's a little bit GTD-ish, but has a direct practical IT take on it without so much dwelling on terminology. Certainly changed the way I worked for the better.
I remember watching a video of her washing all the goodness out of a bit of dough then baking it into a hard inedible lump of starch. Take from that what you will ;-)
I think the EU certainly helped a lot by trade and free movement of people. It's a lot harder to make people from another country into demons if you've met them and shared a bottle of wine with some of their (almost inevitably from a UK perspective, better) food. Not impossible - but much harder.
I think we've had proxy wars by major powers going back millenia - I don't think that's such a strange situation for Europe compared to free movement and cheap flights.
I've watched GBH a few times since it aired and I think it still holds up. Certainly give it a go if you get the chance. The original UK TV version of 'Edge of Darkness' is also still very, very watchable. Some remarkable scenes and performances.