Freyburg

Andrew Marr, host of the excellent Start the Week and former political editor for the BBC doesn’t like bloggers. While I see his point about abusive, nonsensical and and angry commenters, his outright dismissal of new media as a legitimate medium is laughable at best.

More to the point, it’s the typical elitist broadcasting reaction to a democratized media world. The playing field, while still imperfect, is much more level than ever before, and traditional broadcasters do not like the fact that they now face competition from all corners. Some of that competition is indeed “pimply, aggressive and single” but that’s always been true. The larger point is that the self-appointed position of cultural curator has been snatched from the hands of broadcasters and put into the hands of the people. It might not be pretty, but it’s reality, and no amount of bitching from upper-class talking heads will change that.

Having worked in broadcasting myself, I completely welcome this change. Broadcasting has its role and will continue to provide a valuable service, but it’s long past time we were able to create our own content, express our own opinions, and transmit our own shows. The expansion of mobile into every corner of our lives will only accelerate the process. And if Andrew Marr doesn’t like it, tough.

Max Headroom was one of the best television shows of the Eighties. In fact, it’s fair to say that Edison Carter is one of the reasons I got into television, along with Doctor Who director Graeme Harper.

Well, Wired has a tribute to our pixelated forefather, and the article makes the very good point that with the rise of Youtube, video blogging and web series we have all become Max. Everyone is a digital sound-bite, but the difference is we aren’t in thrall to all powerful television networks as portrayed in the show. Instead the internet has made everyone into a network, for good and ill.

Well, no surprise there. But many a year has been pegged as “the year we (fill in the blank)” in the sci-fi realm, and as we reach those years we’re filled with a crashing sense of disappointment. Here’s some of the best sci-fi years and how they actually panned out.

Ah, the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer. Back in 1982, this was my first taste of computational wizardry, expressed through the glories of 32k Extended memory, 8 colors on screen (at once!), tape drives and poring over BASIC manuals. And amazingly, there’s still a user community out there using these beasts. I still have my CoCo tucked away in a closet, along with my Powerbook 100. What was your first computer?