Just one more thing on the JISC conference. The closing plenary session was given by Tom Loosemore, Head of Broadband & Emerging Platforms at the BBC. He opened his talk by explaining that back in the late 1980s, when he was supposed to be studying for his degree, he was actually spending most of his time exploring and experimenting with his university’s Internet connection.
I should perhaps explain that ‘back in the old days’ the only people who had access to the Internet were university staff and researchers. This was partly because the universities had had the foresight to install their own high-speed network (called JANET). Tom’s point was that this pioneering spirit had provided people like him with the opportunity to experiment with the latest thing years before it took off and became popular. He gave a big thank you to JISC for having the vision and taking the risks, and said, “this country would be in a worse place, both culturally and economically, if it wasn’t for you.”
What’s interesting about this is that people of my generation owe a huge debt of thanks to the Beeb. Not for their radio or telly broadcasting (although Blake’s Seven was rather good) but for the introduction of the BBC micro computer. I sincerely believe we wouldn’t have such a vibrant and creative software industry in the UK if it wasn’t for the generation of software programmers, e-learning and games designers raised and bottle-fed on the BBC micro in the 1980s.
Tech Lunch 
March 16, 2007 at 2:52 pm |
Paul,
As you well know, the BBC micro was the one serious machine that we 80’s students could get our hands on to fulfill our lives when the mini-computer terminal rooms closed.
I know that my own career in computing would not have been the same if it had not been for open atmosphere that the BBC and universities promoted with regard to computing and network exploration. After all I was a Pharmacology student after all!
September 17, 2007 at 3:41 pm |
Back in those same old days, lunchtime exploration on our work terminals meant logging into the US university Freenets, browsing Gopher menus, library catalogues, and messing around with primitive text-only web pages with theLynx viewer, long before Mosaic appeared on the scene followed by Netscape with its GUI.
db
September 17, 2007 at 6:26 pm |
Ah, happy days…