My next experience of gaming hardware was the BBC Micro computer. The BBC Micro was distributed in the early 80s as part of a UK initiative to improve digital literacy and almost every school had at least one. The BBC Micro was, of course, much more than a gaming machine. Our childminder, a retired teacher, had one at home and my brother and I would play on it when we went round to her house, which is why it wasn’t until the 90s before I came across one, but after using the Amiga and other consoles it felt like an antique.
Waiting for games to load off the 5″ floppy discs. There was a particular sequence in which things had to be done to load up a game and it was unforgiving at worst and temperamental at best. I don’t remember playing a wide variety of games – just Chuckie Egg and Elite. I could never get to the high levels on Chuckie Egg but Elite, however, was incredible: You could explore an Entire universe. I’d longed for a return of this game and can’t express the joy I had when I discovered a few years ago that Elite Dangerous had been made.
The government-sponsored rollout probably makes this machine a prominent piece of tech nostalgia for any child who attended school in the 1980s. It’s surprising then that 40 years later, the UK government is still struggling to improve digital literacy in school children. I re-trained in 2018 in teaching as a consequence to more recent changes in the national curriculum to introduce computer science. I would definitely echo the many studies that indicate that, sadly, despite our history of computing innovation, our younger generations (in state education) simply lack the skills and knowledge for the digital age. Ironic really, that the majority seem addicted to their mobile phones but then again a theme of many of Asimov’s stories (e.g. the ‘Feeling of Power’) is that many technologically advanced civilisations end up forgetting the fundamentals of how to build or repair that technology. It never ceased to amaze me how many kids’ parents would be interested in their son undertaking GCSE computer science because they played computer games a lot. I drive a car, doesn’t mean I’m a mechanic.