The BBC Micro effect
Nowadays, we look fondly upon the BBC Micro as a driving force in fostering a new generation of geeks. Although it was to an extent, the pivotal nature of the machine itself is somewhat overstated.
The real success of the Micro was that a trend was spotted – affordable microcomputers all speaking a loosely common language — and seized upon. The effect of the Micro wasn’t that millions of children had the hardware in their homes, but that schools were bludgeoned into embracing this new world of affordable, accessible, technology. Even so, the microcomputer revolution was largely something happening outside of school, and the educational aspects of it helped keep that momentum going — along with countless books, magazines, bits of Ceefax, and so on.
Most families couldn’t afford the BBC Micro. But many could afford a capable microcomputer. Almost all of them spoke BASIC — and although much derided, it had the huge advantage of being near-ubiquitous provided you could paper over the differences in dialect. These microcomputers, collectively, were state of the art: they were at the forefront of technology, at a time before the technology had become a commodity consumer electronics product. The last decade or so’s worth of geeks weren’t the ones who were attentive in lessons, but the ones who wanted to make the technology do something once their eyes had been opened to the fact that there was more to them than LOAD and RUN.
Nowadays, things are a little bit different. We live in an Internet-connected world where the technology is a consumer proposition. I don’t think that’s a bad thing by any means (and some of the arguments about the newest-generation devices ending up in the classroom seem eerily familiar to those surrounding pocket calculators a few decades ago). But consumer products take real effort to get below the surface: most people don’t really know how a DVD player or a microwave oven works, and deliberately so.
Yet computing devices are distinct from most kinds of consumer electronics. They’re not usually single-purpose devices, but blank slates waiting to be filled in. Sure, there’s no shortage of people able to do that now, but what about in ten, fifteen, twenty years’ time? The slow, steady, march of Internet connectivity means that there’s more to do, and greater potential, than ever before. We’re heading towards not only with the question of who will create the software for the device in your hand or your pocket, but also who will come up with the ideas for the services they talk to. This isn’t just a matter of programming skills, but of being able to understand how it all works, from the basic structure of a computing device all the way up to Internet architecture (and that’s not to say that every developer should have a complete understanding of time-slicing algorithms in pre-emptive multitasking operating system kernels, but recognition of the fact that the best developers have a basic knowledge of what’s going on all the way down the stack).
Were we to seek a “BBC Micro moment” all over again, we need to draw on aspects of the original microcomputing revolution, and mix it up according to the lay of the land today.
We need the ubiquitous language, but it needs to be something which sits well in an Internet-connected world (and it’s worth remembering that the “best” language isn’t necessarily the best language — lots of computer scientists held the view that BASIC was too limited to do anything useful with, after all).
The microcomputers of the 80s weren’t built for learning, and that helped enormously in ensuring they weren’t left to gather dust: unless the thing you create is general-purpose (or based on something general-purpose), it doesn’t get you very far. Schools certainly have a part to play, though — encouraging that eye-opening moment where it becomes clear that the lump of hardware at your fingertips isn’t the same as a microwave or a refrigerator. In the 1980s, this was relatively self-evident, but is less so now.
In contrast to the micros of the 80s, you don’t necessarily need dedicated hardware just to get started. Even so, coverage isn’t 100%, and perhaps something like the Raspberry Pi could help. Similarly, hackable hardware such as the Arduino and, to an extent, the Open University’s SenseBoard provide good ways to begin tinkering. And, perhaps, “hackable toys” might be one way to encourage particularly young budding technologists to start playing in a constructive way.
I’m fairly convinced that there’s a lot of excellent stuff out there, but also that there isn’t something which is really it. But, I’m also pretty firmly convinced that now is the right time to do it.
