Freyburg

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?