I may be overstating this. The first time you could ever have heard something I wrote be broadcast was 14 March 1987 on BBC2. It was in an episode of a show called Micro Live which was part of the BBC\u2019s Computer Literacy Project. I am not credited, but as it was live I can also know precisely where I was on that day from 18:25-18:55 or so. BBC Television Centre, which I wouldn\u2019t come to think of as home until just shy of a decade later.<\/p>\n
Micro Live that week featured the then-new idea of desktop publishing and at the time I was working for a firm that made one of these DTP systems. You\u2019ve never heard of it. I\u2019ve just sat here for twenty minutes trying to remember it. The world was not shaken by this firm, let\u2019s leave it there.<\/p>\n
Whereas it was shaken, according to Micro Live, by Apple. It\u2019s weird now to see that episode and how it would\u2019ve been the first time I\u2019d ever come across a Mac. If one could only realise how integral to your work a box in the corner could become.<\/p>\n
As for the other box in the corner, the television, well, I think I\u2019ve left you waiting long enough. I can quote to you my entire contribution to that episode because it is just about exactly half a sentence long. Presenter Ian McNaught-Davis was supposed to say that Apple was the first computer company in publishing and no, excuse me, it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Everything he was going to say about what Apple actually did was true but it was far from accurate to say they were the first.<\/p>\n
So now if you should manage to track down an obscure TV show from 31 years ago, you would be able to see and hear McNaught-Davis instead begin his speech with the words: \u201cOf course there were computers in publishing before, but\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
What are the odds that you\u2019d ever be able to check this? Remarkably high, as it happens, because it only requires you to click a couple of times.<\/p>\n
For this week the BBC released every episode of Micro Live and all the other shows in the Computer Literacy project online. Every minute of it. Here\u2019s my episode<\/a>.<\/p>\n Excuse me while I remember being very young and rather nervous but adamant that the script be accurate. Not everything changes, then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I may be overstating this. The first time you could ever have heard something I wrote be broadcast was 14 … Continue reading