BBC4 are running a brilliant series of technology related programs currently as part of their ‘Electric Revolution’ season. The season encompasses everything from new tv programming looking at the rise of technology through the years, with bags of childhood nostalgia for anyone over the age of 30, to analysing how new technologies have changed our lives and how we’ve evolved as people and a society to interact with them. There have also been some great documentaries charting the evolution of specific technologies, such as the semiconductor, and the people behind them. 
Finally the drama Micro Men is a must see for anyone of the Sinclair Spectrum and Acorn BBC computer generation, with the casting of Martin Freeman (The Office) playing Acorn’s Chris Curry and Alexander Armstrong (Armstrong & Miller) playing Sinclair’s Sir Clive Sinclair simply genius.
If you’re into the evolution of technology, analysing how we interact with technology or predicting the future technology trends there’s much here which will interest and provoke thought. One of the things most people in this ridiculously fast paced electronic technology industry are often guilty of is failing to analyse the industries past mistakes, analysing why we are where we are and using this to avoid making the same mistakes and to predict how future technologies are likely to pan out. What’s fascinating about many of these programs is just how fast we’ve got to where we are now, and how systematically each new technology breakthrough appeared. Of course we all know it’s happened really quickly, and have memories of a few particular technology stages through our life, but when you see programs such as the three part ‘Electric Dreams’ you realise there is much you’ve forgotten and the pace over the years has become a blur.
It seems rather unusual that BBC4 have commissioned all of these new programs and I feel rather fortunate in many ways that all this programming has been created just for me, but actually this shouldn’t be such an unusual season on our screens. We all now take technology for granted and most normal people wouldn’t even dare to contemplate how the technology they use actually works. However in reality the building blocks of the technology we use day to day now are much the same as 30 years ago, just smaller and faster. Whats todays devices do is of course pretty mind boggling to most, but its all based on the same concepts and base technologies of 20 years ago, just with more power and better design tools. Programming like this, whilst fascinating stuff for engineers of today, hopefully has a big influence on the next generation of engineers to become inquisitive and hopefully fascinated.
The ‘Electric Revolution’ season is running on BBC 4 until and if you’ve missed the last couple of weeks catch it on BBC iPlayer before its gone.
