Lament for Tomorrow’s World, and concern for tomorrow’s Britain
The 1980s were a great time to grow up if you had even the slightest interest in science and technology. On terrestrial TV we had amazing shows such as Tomorrow’s World, which managed to perfectly package the latest advances in science and technology for consumption by the average person in the street, or child even, and without being patronising.
Where Tomorrow’s World served to inspire by demonstrating what was possible and by highlighting that which was just within our reach, shows such as Take Nobody’s Word for It demonstrated key scientific principles via simple experiments that we could often easily repeat at home.
Now we have the likes of Scrapheap Challenge, but this is little more than a dumbed down and less ingenious version of another 80s classic, The Great Egg Race, and a pale imitation at best and that is pitched primarily at petrol heads. OK, so we also have Braniacs, but whilst science features much content is far from being educational or serving to inspire (unless you aspire to carry out research into which foods if eaten often will make you odorous, or plan for a career in caravan demolition), and what is worse it’s frequently sexist, and is often padded with laddish humour that is of little merit in terms of either education or entertainment.
Putting TV aside, in the days before the common domestic availability of the Internet if you wanted instant, free, long distance communications about your only option was amateur radio. If you wanted to get your hands dirty with computing you typically had the choice of a multitude of 8 bit micros which fostered the hacker ethic, encouraging you to write programs in languages such as basic and to get more intimate with the operation of your computer than most will ever get in the current day. With many people going as far as building their own computers from kits as they were simply unable to afford an off-the-shelf machine, and the BBC taking it upon themselves to build a standard, and by some measure affordable machine for the British nation, and which was widely adopted across its schools: the BBC Micro.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t for a moment wish the Internet away or suggest that we all go back to using a wide spectrum of primitive and frequently incompatible, and costly, home computers. But it’s sad to see hobbies such as amateur radio becoming largely the reserve of those in their later years, and home computing to become represented by a homogeneous, beige in colour and in experience, disposable and all too frequently hermetic platform.
However, my concern goes beyond nostalgia and a sense of loss for that which I held dear, and is for the future of a nation that is increasingly putting less value on science and engineering. A little while ago I attended an open evening at the Culham research facility and was saddened to hear that there is a desperate shortage of people studying physics at university level. This was by no means the first time I’d heard that our universities were producing insufficient numbers of scientists, and have also heard it said that computing is becoming a much less popular area of study.
It is not that the 1980s were particularly a golden age, either in terms of research and innovation or the public’s interest in such things. There has been a healthy scene for amateurs who wish to tinker and experiment with electronics, radio and mechanical engineering etc. since the very genesis of such disciplines. Up until now, that is. The fact of the matter is that many, if not most technical topics are now widely regarded as “uncool”, and also tend to feature much less in the media. Generally speaking nobody fixes their car any more, or builds their own radio or computer, and very few have even a basic understanding of how many of these things work. Science is not for TV unless it is a spectacle of some sort — it has to be weird, whimsical or else just plain old dumbed down. And children don’t get Meccano, Technic Lego, model aeroplanes, chemistry sets or electronics kits for Christmas any more.
We want technology. But we don’t want to bother ourselves with how it works.
It is natural for technology to evolve to the point where the user need not concern themselves with the details of its operation. It is reasonable for people to desire automation, ease or lack of a need for maintenance, and for technology to increasingly encroach less on their free time. However, whilst we seek to wash our hands of the details who takes care of them? A desire for leisure and convenience taken too far will lead to an ignorant nation of incapables.
I don’t claim to have all the answers to this problem, but would suggest that a good start might be:
- The BBC recognising the problem, taking appropriate action and bringing back programming such as Tomorrow’s World, Take Nobody’s Word for It and The Great Egg Race. Not necessarily the same shows, but programming of a similar quality and which will serve to educate and inspire whilst entertaining.
- Recognition from the Government that this is a serious problem, and a commitment to a comprehensive and holistic plan of action to address the matter, e.g.: work with schools, increased investment in research and action to bring it most visibly into the public eye, national technology programmes a la the BBC Micro and support for amateur science, technology and engineering groups.
We are a nation of hobbyists, tinkerers and experimenters at heart, and the sciences, technology and engineering are long overdue a renaissance amongst the British public!
I recently came across the rather cool 

Today (24th March) is Ada Lovelace Day, and I, along with >1,500 other people,
Tuesday evening I attended a lecture at the
As an ex-electronics engineer, hardware geek and a strong advocate of free and open source software, it should come as no surprise that I get more than a little excited at the prospect of open source hardware.
Last Thursday I attended a
It was brought to my attention yesterday, that an article which I wrote for the UK Unix User Group on “The Growing Need for F/OSS Governance”, and which went out to the UKUUG membership in print before Christmas, is