The Machine That Changed The World

Aaron Martin-Colby
Sep 1, 2018 · 2 min read

In 1991, PBS produced an epic, five-part documentary chronicling the rise of computers from Babbage up to the early days of the Internet. It is, as far as I know, the only large scale documentary effort to talk about this journey, and yet it has inexplicably almost completely disappeared. I only learned of it earlier this month.

The show is a gold mine of interviews with the founders of the computer industry, going all the way back to contemporaries of Alan Turing. Its fourth episode is especially noteworthy because it covers, nearly 30 years ago, all of the progress going on with AI that is suddenly being talked about today as though it were new.

Episodes 2 through 5 are available on YouTube, but episode 1 was apparently removed by the request of the BBC, so, fuck you, BBC. Thankfully, I found a copy on Vimeo, where it has racked up a rocking 577 views. Valuable shit you got there, BBC. Better protect it!

I cannot stress enough how everyone should watch this. The computer world has terrible historical myopia, forgetting lessons learned just ten years previously. This series, being nearly 30 years old, actually becomes more valuable with its age. It emphasizes how so much of what we are doing today, we were doing then. The cutting edge technology of today is actually old. Our ideas are not new. People far smarter than we are came up with these ideas decades ago. We’re just reaping the rewards.

And here are some bonus videos such as extended interview with Ted Nelson, where he dispenses a lot of the wisdom that shows up throughout the series.

And finally, PBS has posted the extended interviews for nearly everyone from the documentary.

It.

Is.

AMAZING.

You have hour-plus long interviews with Jobs, Wozniak, Minsky, Gates, and Kay. Every single one of them is worth a watch. And for even more history and insight, Alan Kay is answering questions on Quora. Go bother him.

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