Original title
Micro Live
Released
10/2/1983
Origin country
GB
Genre
Documentary
Status
Ended
Number of seasons
3
Number of episodes
2
Micro Live was a BBC2 TV series produced by David Allen as part of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project. The series was broadcast live and covered a wide range of computer-related topics, featuring various microcomputers beyond the BBC Micro. The first program was a two-hour special on 2 October 1983, called Making the Most of the Micro Live. A regular monthly series began in October 1984, followed by weekly half-hour programs in 1985 and 1986. The series ended in 1987. Micro Live had a less formal feel due to its live nature and included stories from the US, such as the first on-air transatlantic cellphone call made during a snowstorm.
In a live edition of Making the Most of the Micro, Ian McNaught-Davis is joined in the studio by an audience of micro users and a team of experts. There are demonstrations of hardware and software, including a live download of a program from the BBC's new Telesoftware service, and a look at how the micro can be used to subtitle home videos. Dave Ellis makes micros make music, John Coll demonstrates an electronic mail service, and three teams of programmers, working on different micros, write software against the clock. And a national software competition is launched by the Minister for Information Technology, Kenneth Baker. Whether you are expert or novice, you can take part in the programme by joining in the phone-in, and putting questions or comments to the experts.
The home computer industry has recently seen important changes of fortune for some of its major players, including Sir Clive Sinclair, Alan Sugar of Amstrad, and Bryan Long of Acorn. Their views, plus a look at the latest hardware and software, make up an assessment of changes since the last episode of Micro Live. Also a review of do-it-yourself computer animation software and then, hotfooting it from this year's Computer Animation Film Festival ceremony, Lesley Judd reviews the best of this year's mainframe masterpieces. (1986)
In the last, extended edition of the series, Micro Live visits the Haymarket Theatre where the world of Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, is portrayed by Derek Jacobi in the stageplay Breaking the Code. Turing's computers in the 1940s and 1950s were 'first-generation' machines; now computer scientists are working on the 'fifth generation'. In Scotland the institute named after Turing has a world reputation in artificial intelligence work, but its software products are hardly used in the UK. In California, where seemingly limitless sums are thrown at research projects, 'Chinese temples', 'brainstorming' and robots for war veterans are the subjects of fifth generation work. Dr Ian Page of Oxford University puts such present and future work in perspective. (1987)
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