[SIGCIS-Members] Two good recent TV programmes on the history of computing that are worth viewing.

Sun Feb 7 00:57:25 PST 2010

In case you are interested in actually looking at the Podfather video
outside the UK, it has now been uploaded to youtube  (about 10 min
clips)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpPUR3hJ16o&feature=related

Also available for download

http://www.downarchive.com/movies/documentary/51527-bbc-podfather-2009-dvdrip-documentary.html

Best
Bernardo

On 18 October 2009 08:25, Bernardo Batiz-Lazo <bbatiz64 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi James
>
> I think you are spot on regarding -Micro Men-. Little for me to add
> which I will do from the perspective of an ex-pat who actually owned a
> Timex circa 1980.
>
> _Micro Men_ was indeed in need of a  better introduction which briefly
> told about US/IBM dominance and Wilson's 'white heat'.
>
> In my view the combination of comedy and factual in _Micro Men_ seems
> to have made their errors and omissions more palatable. Certainly when
> compared with claims made in _Podfather_  which positioned Noyce as
> Godfather of Sillicon Valley and the digital revolution. I am not
> disclaiming Noyce's importance, but a brief browse at Analee
> Sexenian's work might have helped to tone down some of their more
> outrageous claims (i.e. Noyce single handedly inventing Sillicon
> Valley and venture capitalism).
>
> Reducing the genealogy of Fairchild Corp to Apple and Google (when the
> producers did try to produce some form genalogy-tree graph) is the
> kind of simplistic representation that media people are guilty of time
> and again.
>
> It was interesting to see that the industry-university link and
> communities of practice (as opposed to the lonely entrepreneur) were
> strongly portrayed in _Micro Men_  while they were mute in
> _Podfather_.
>
> When comparing both programs I was left wondering the extent to which
> their distinctive treats were random or purposeful attempts to cater
> to different audiences (with _Micro Men_ for the UK and _Podfather_
> for the US).
>
> But in spite of their shortcomings, I did not mind at all ending
> Friday and Saturday night with respectively _Micro Men_ and
> _Podfather_.
>
> Best
> Bernardo
>
> 2009/10/16 James Sumner <james.sumner at manchester.ac.uk>:
>> Thanks to Bernardo for the heads-up, and to Neil for the first-hand
>> recollection. The historical material in the BBC4 'Electric Revolution' season
>> seems to be attracting a lot of interest: I hope it'll soon be available outside
>> the UK.
>>
>> I thought I would chip in with some thoughts on _Micro Men_, as I research
>> (slowly) in this area and have an interest in how technologies, and
>> technologists, are portrayed for more general audiences. What fascinated me
>> about _Micro Men_ is that it seemed to be two concepts welded together: a broad
>> comedy about a caricatured version of Clive Sinclair, and a relatively careful
>> attempt to make drama out of techie business history.
>>
>> I'd be interested to know what others made of this. It seems reasonable to
>> assume that the piece was commissioned on the strength of the appeal of a
>> favourite national myth (such were Sinclair's triumphs and disasters in the
>> 1980s that he remains recognisable, I'd guess, to most people in the UK aged
>> 30+). 'Factual' content in popular broadcast media is almost generally deemed to
>> require some sort of sugar-coating: the approach used here arguably has some
>> merits over the usual alternative, which is to tell very loud and breathless
>> stories about how whatever is under discussion has 'changed the world'.
>>
>> The melding certainly had its problems. The pure farce scenes (Mensa groupies?)
>> jarred with the plot, and the genre-clash was sometimes awkward. I particularly
>> noticed the (non-)characterisation of Nigel Searle, who, as MD of Sinclair's
>> firm, was perched on the interface between the Comedy Clive material and the
>> attempt to portray real industrial developments. Conventional comedy logic would
>> require Searle to be a stock henchman; strict representation, on the other hand,
>> would have given no obvious grounds to differentiate him from the Acorn people
>> with whom the narrative sympathises. In order to fit both halves, the fictional
>> Searle became a cipher, relaying messages and influencing nothing. Meanwhile,
>> the personalities assigned to the Acorn staff (Hauser as cosmic bluffer; Furber
>> and Wilson as dull-and-duller; Curry, very improbably, as wide-eyed everyman)
>> were as much inventions as Comedy Clive, and rather less upfront about it.
>>
>> As to names, places and chronology, however, this was closer to the documented
>> evidence than the vast majority of drama-docs. More importantly, there were
>> earnest and sometimes very successful attempts to represent an episode in
>> technological identity-forming and the trajectories of the businesses involved,
>> rather than going down the easy legend-making route. Capital, in this drama, was
>> raised not by self-evident visionary brilliance, but by pandering to the bank
>> manager's prejudice. There was no hint of the 'lone developer' myth. Tension was
>> wrung from overoptimistic sales projections. Above all, the fictional Clive
>> Sinclair mirrored his real-life counterpart in rating the microcomputers which
>> defined his public identity as a distinctly secondary concern.
>>
>> It's in the nature of these productions to truncate, telescope and omit. There
>> was only one simplification which I found seriously distorting: the virtual
>> absence, until the closing scene, of the USA. Sinclair's principal rival from
>> around 1982 was not Acorn but Commodore; the ill-fated Acorn Electron was an
>> attempt to carve a share of a sector defined as much by Commodore as by
>> Sinclair, while the even more ill-fated Sinclair QL was at some level a response
>> both to the emerging office dominance of the IBM PC, and to Apple's visible
>> commitment to promoting alternatives. Acorn's unreleased business machines, and
>> both firms' adventures in the American retail market (via Timex, in Sinclair's
>> case) further complicate the tale. Oddly, the show's closing caption -- "The
>> home computer market is now dominated by giant American companies" -- presents
>> the sloppiest message in the whole production.
>>
>> Cheers
>> James
>>
>>
>> Roger Neil Barton wrote:
>>  > IMHO the Bob Noyce telebio last night was as brilliant as the other
>> programmes in the series in the series were terrible.  In fact most lasted only
>> a few minutes before I switched off and I missed the second (or more if there
>> were more) part of the drama about Sinclair and Acorn.
>>  >
>>  > In Ken Tennet's blog he talks about "Acorn's descent into financial
>> difficulty as the bank happily gives the company bigger loans for expansion, and
>> it carries out an ill-advised stock exchange flotation."  Acorn was not a client
>> and I didn't do the float but I did organise and host a conference ('84 or 85?),
>> on the paperless office (ha ha), at the NCC in Manchester to which I invited
>> Acorn.  I don't remember now but Acorn were represented either by Chris Curry or
>> Herman Hauser.  It was required by Stock Exchange rules then, and is legally
>> obligatory now, not to make any statement that provides new information to the
>> market without a formal statement to the Stock Exchange.  The Acorn presentation
>> included the jaw dropping news that sales were down some massive number and that
>> the company would miss expectations by miles.  By the end of the immediately
>> following coffee break the share price had collapsed and they hurriedly
>> departed.  I'm sorry now I didn't persist with the drama but perhaps I'll catch
>> up on the iplayer.
>>  >
>>  > kind regards
>>  > neil
>>  >
>>  >
>>  > Dr Roger Neil Barton
>>  > http://www.uclmail.net/~neil.barton/
>>  > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bernardo Batiz-Lazo"
>> <bbatiz64 at googlemail.com>
>>  > To: <comban at sigcis.org>
>>  > Cc: <members at sigcis.org>
>>  > Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 12:34 PM
>>  > Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Two good recent TV programmes on the history
>> ofcomputing that are worth viewing.
>>  >
>>  >
>>  >> A heads up to Ken Tennet's Blog (he is part of the Business History
>>  >> Unit at the London School of Economics):
>>  >>
>>  >> http://kdtennent.blogspot.com/2009/10/recent-business-history-on-bbc.html
>>  >>
>>  >> He comments on two recent tv programs on the history of computing. Not
>>  >> sure if everyone will be able to download and play.But at least you
>>  >> can get an idea from Ken and if really keen, then ask for a copy for
>>  >> your uni's library.
>>  >>
>>  >> You can keep up with Ken via Facebook.
>>  >>
>>  >> Best,
>>  >> Bernardo
>>  >> University of Leicester
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