Restarting The Computer Programme
In the early 1980s, the BBC made several series of programmes regarding what were called, at the time, microcomputers. They were deliberately easy-to-understand for practically anyone. This was because of a particular corporate interest: the BBC had created the Computer Literacy Project to bring home computing to the masses, and of course, television series were the obvious way to help to promote both understanding and adoption.
Indirectly, the BBC was responsible for one of the UK’s biggest contemporary technology success stories. The project’s totem device, the BBC Micro, enabled its contractor Acorn to become commercially successful which led it to develop successors to that computer later in the 1980s. Those successors, the Archimedes range, used powerful, Acorn-designed chips whose designs could be adapted and used elsewhere. Those designs were the foundation of ARM, with its chip design used in the majority of many computing applications today.
The first series was called The Computer Programme, made in 1981 and broadcast in the subsequent year. At the time, the BBC Micro wasn’t yet ready so although the programme appears to show it, in reality it’s just a case with the inner workings connected off-camera. Here’s a clip of a demonstration of France Telecom’s Minitel project.
All three series — The Computer Programme, Making the most of the micro and Micro Live — were presented by Ian MacNaughton alongside Lesley Judd and Chris Serle. They all followed a similar pattern of being very purposeful and demonstrative; talking more about applications than (for example) games. As a kid, watching Micro Live seemed very dry, but that’s because it was produced as such. It wasn’t for Spectrum-owning gamers like me; it was for BBC Micro-owning people that wanted to use grown-up applications like databases and word processors. But that’s fine. I wasn’t really the target audience anyway.
After Micro Live, the BBC’s interest waned in terms of this type of programming. Perhaps it was because the Computer Literacy Project had ended, so there wasn’t as much of a corporate involvement.
Fast-forward to 2024 and, still, such a programme doesn’t exist. That is a great shame, as it seems apparent — at least to me — that the need for home computing education is at its greatest, ever. You can’t fight online disinformation if the user base doesn’t even know how to generally manage their devices. As we used to say in the magazine that I ran, Imperica, if you buy a product, you are an owner. If you buy a product that is connected to the Internet, you are a system administrator.
If I still ran a digital media business then I would pitch such a programme to the main broadcasters. There is absolutely, in my view, a public benefit to it. Unfortunately the broadcasters seem less interested than ever; the BBC’s Sunday mornings, which is when the aforementioned microcomputing programmes were broadcast, are now just wall-to-wall cheap homes/cookery fodder.
A 2024 equivalent of the series could be something like:
- The Internet devices in your home — what they are, how to keep them updated, security hints and tips
- Domestic Internet security — phishing, hacking, authentication
- AI — how to get the most out of it, prompt engineering, models, deconstructing how AI works, running AI models on your machine
- Disinformation — what it is, and how to spot it, where it comes from, what to do about it
- The social media industry — what is an influencer, the truths of an influencer lifestyle
- Programming — languages, how to develop software, app stores
We have a massive media literacy issue in the UK — and, in fairness, many other countries — where such education simply doesn’t exist, or is too reactive to catch up to contemporary learning opportunities and become wiser to threats.
This is surely a no-brainer.
