Now the Chips Are Down: The BBC Micro

by Alison Gazzard

The story of a pioneering its beginnings as part of a national Computer Literary Project, its innovative hardware, and its creative uses. In 1982, the British Broadcasting Corporation launched its Computer Literacy Project, intended “to introduce interested adults to the world of computers and computing.” The BBC accompanied this initiative with television programs, courses, books, and software—an early experiment in multi-platform education. The BBC, along with Acorn Computers, also introduced the BBC Microcomputer, which would be at the forefront of the campaign. The BBC Micro was designed to meet the needs of users in homes and schools, to demystify computing, and to counter the general pessimism among the media in Britain about technology. In this book, Alison Gazzard looks at the BBC Micro, examining the early capabilities of multi-platform content generation and consumption and the multiple literacies this approach enabled—not only in programming and software creation, but also in accessing information across a range of media, and in “do-it-yourself” computing. She links many of these early developments to current new-media practices. Gazzard looks at games developed for the BBC Micro, including Granny's Garden , an educational game for primary schools, and Elite , the seminal space-trading game. She considers the shift in focus from hardware to peripherals, describing the Teletext Adapter as an early model for software distribution and the Domesday Project (which combined texts, video, and still photographs) as a hypermedia-like experience. Gazzard's account shows the BBC Micro not only as a vehicle for various literacies but also as a user-oriented machine that pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved in order to produce something completely new.

Genres: Games, Computers

234 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 19, 2016

Reviews

[Marnix Wolf · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you’ve ever looked at a BBC Micro and thought, 'This 8-bit machine is wonderful, but what it really needs is a 200-page colonoscopy performed with a thesaurus,' then Alison Gazzard has written the book for you.
​Finally, a book that manages to drain every ounce of joy, nostalgia, and actual history out of the 1980s computing boom. Gazzard doesn’t just describe a computer; she 'situates platform-specific characteristics within the discourse of multiple literacies.' Translated into human English: people used the machine for stuff.
​This isn't a book for people who like computers, history, or clear communication. It’s a 200-page circle jerk for the MIT Press 'Platform Studies' crowd, where the goal isn't to inform the reader, but to prove the author has read more Foucault than you. It’s a celebration of self-importance disguised as scholarship. If you enjoy dry, academic masturbation where 'using a joystick' becomes an 'exploration of haptic interface agency,' dive in. For the rest of us who prefer the 'literacy' of not wasting our time: skip it.

[Koen Crolla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another very paint-by-numbers entry in the Platform Studies series, this one looking at the BBC Micro. The Micro wasn't that interesting a machine from a technical point of view—or rather, its interesting aspects mostly ended up having no impact whatsoever on user experience—and its distinctness was purely a function of its social context.
If you've never used a Micro or played the games discussed, a lot of the book will be hard to get into (also because it's very light on pictures—there's one straight screenshot, not of any of the games, and a couple of simplified recreations, and that's it), but if you already have fond memories of it, you'll probably enjoy it as a trip down memory lane. It's little more than that, though.

[Ian Bird · Rating 1 out of 5]

170 pages without speaking with a single primary source. Almost all sources are secondary or tertiary, drawing from magazine and tv shows from the period to dramatizations decades later. The structure of the book reads like a gigantic high school essay, obsessively focused on its central thesis and endlessly reiterating how each subheading strengthens it. The book, given its source limitations, does not offer any insight or new information, and begs the question of who it’s intended for.

[Lucas]

A few pictures would be nice- especially for those like me who've never seen a BBC Micro in real life (the Seattle Living Computer Museum really needs a UK home computer exhibit).

I would have liked to see a deeper technical dive into how graphics were generated in Elite or another prominent game.

[Simon Dobson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A look at the BBC Micro through a very academic prism: I've never seen some popular games dissected or considered as topics for post-modern readings! In this sense it's a very different treatment to the more common histories of computers from this era, and one that I suspect for most people will be a lot less satisfying.