The Home Computer That Roared: How the BBC Micro Shaped Our World
04 Sep 2024 (10 days ago)
Early Experiences with Home Computers in the UK
- Jeremy Rustin, despite working on the 20-year-old open source project Sly Wiki, will be discussing his experiences with early home computers in the UK.
- Rustin argues that while other home computers like the Spectrum may have influenced the gaming industry, the BBC micro had a broader impact on the computer industry.
- Rustin recalls that in the early 1980s, computers were viewed with fear and apprehension by many, likening them to how people in the 1920s may have viewed airplanes.
- Community computer magazines were a way to distribute software, often containing listings of programs that people were expected to type in themselves.
- The BBC Micro computer, released in 1981, featured a variety of ports, including a networking interface, making it one of the first networkable home computers.
- The speaker learned to program on a BBC Micro, eventually disassembling and understanding its entire codebase, including BBC BASIC.
The Development of TiddlyWiki
- The speaker created TiddlyWiki, a customisable and interactive note-taking application, to empower individuals to create their own tools, citing examples of a volleyball coach and the Anna Freud Centre using it for their specific needs.
- TiddlyWiki, an open-source project, has a large Chinese user base that communicates and collaborates through Chinese message boards and tools.
- The speaker's goal was to create software accessible to people of all cultures.
Work with the BBC
- Jeremy worked on a project for BBC where he created animations for children's TV shows using a BBC Micro computer.
- Jeremy co-wrote a book called "The Book of Listings" which was published by BBC Publications.
- Jeremy developed the BBC's first official computer game based on the Doctor Who franchise.
- The speaker collaborated with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop on the music and sound effects for a Doctor Who game.
- The code for the Doctor Who game is available online.
Other Projects and Reflections
- The speaker created a Markov chain generator program, originally for the BBC micro, that generates random text based on frequency calculations of letter sequences in training data.
- The speaker found that the 8-bit pixelated aesthetic and its accompanying music were very popular.
- The speaker learned from Richard Dawkins that there is more to human life than passing on genes, and that the purpose of life is to love and be loved.
- The speaker believes that people work together best through love and that technology is ultimately a people business.