This week Click - the BBC World Service's weekly technology programme - outlines its 10th anniversary. Bill Thompson reflects on a decade of the internet on the radio.
During June and July 2001, we helped a few friends in the BBC's air wave scholarship section with 'Go Digital', a new technology programme that had been consecrated by the BBC World Service for their English denunciation service, where it would lay with programmes on illness and scholarship as segment of the broader non-news coverage.
Working with Tracey Logan, the presenter, we made a few commander programmes that were not expected to be broadcast. Fine-tuning the change of packages, anchor introductions and review with the 'studio expert' or 'presenter's friend' who was ostensible to spin up any week and offer commentary, credentials data and - where vital - a interpretation of any unknown technical vernacular from the interviews and reports that made up the bulk of the show.
It was a purpose we described as 'Well, Tracey', given after any talk or pre-recorded package she would spin to me and I'd go 'Well, Tracey', and say something we hoped was helpful.
The uncover was initial announce in Aug 2001 and we concluded to take segment in the initial 4 or 5 programmes, whilst things bedded in, but it was made coherent that once Tracey had found her feet there would be a not similar guest any week to supply a few accumulation and make sure that the narration wasn't paltry to one person's perspective.
Go Digital was well-received, and celebrates its 10th jubilee this week with a special live announce from the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House. Gareth Mitchell took over as anchor in 2004, it was renamed 'Digital Planet' in 2005 and became 'Click' (the air wave chronicle of the TV programme) progressing this year.
It has altered time container and duration, had many superb producers (including a few who might not have accepted anything about computing or technology but attempted really hard), moved from its original home in the groundwork of Bush House, and journeyed the world from Nairobi to Venice.
A decade in digital
Much has altered given 2001. When we launched there was no Facebook, no YouTube and no Twitter, whilst Google was usually 3 years old. The Code Red worm was aggressive computers running Microsoft's IIS Web Server, and we was using a Sony Vaio laptop with 128 megabytes of mental recall and a large 20 gigabyte hard drive. My mobile phone was a phone, nonetheless it did send and take content messages.
Over the years we have covered the technology landscape, from AI to Zero-day vulnerabilities, with a lot of consideration paid to growth outward the created economies, and a regular concentration on people rsther than than the computers, phones or networks.
The gait of change means that we are never partial of topics - either it's the use of amicable media to irritate diplomatic change, the challenges to the ideas of privacy, or the significance of digitally transmitted data services in transforming the lives of the world's bad and deprived.
It's a covenant to the BBC World Service that the programme has remained a key segment of the scholarship offering, and that conversing about digital technology is still seen as value doing, but that might be because we're not really a technology programme at all.
Tracey, Gareth and we have always been more meddlesome in the people than the technology, and we try hard to prevent simply keeping up glossy toys and going 'ooh' and 'aah', even even though I'm an stated technophile.
And right away we're in the centre of a subversion in human capabilities caused by the presentation of a new category of intelligence-amplifying collection - that will be as deep-rooted in their repercussions as the innovation of mill tools, glow or print valid to be.
A smartphone and Google-equipped young person today, able to daub in to sufficient of the world's expertise and their whole amicable network without a thought, is a really not similar person to me at 18, and they are going to erect a not similar world to live in.
I hope that we obtain to inform on it, for at least a small whilst longer.
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