[pressgang] Episode 6 - INTERFACE

[Belinda]

Ive not had time to participate in the rewatch, but in 1989 i was in Year
9, and in our computer class we had a modem, so i dont think it was unheard
of, at least not in Australia.

Of course i didnt have one at home until 1994 in second year of my computer
science degree.

Enjoying reading everyone's thoughts, hope to contribute soon.

On Thu, 24 Feb 2022, 12:55 Katie Bird, <k.bird at optusnet.com.au> wrote:

>
> Thanks for the great review, Laura. I agree with a lot in it (especially
> relating to the round of applause at the end), but do wonder about your
> question about the likelihood of a school having a modem in 1989. I would
> have thought that if this seemed implausible this would have been raised
> more at the time – after all, presumably Steven Moffat knew schools very
> well, having worked in them. As others have mentioned, the internet has
> been around for longer than its current form and educational institutions
> (admittedly more likely universities) were involved in it from early on.
>
> It does dovetail into my own story about “ye olde Internet”. When I was in
> primary school (so definitely pre-1992 when I moved on to high school), I
> can recall having a class with a teacher where we were introduced to the
> concept of the then “internet” (for want of a better word – he would likely
> have called it something else and it may well have been the pre-internet,
> given that it was only messaging involved).
>
> Every student in the class was then given the name of someone in a school
> in (from memory) North America and we then each had the opportunity to
> write out a couple of lines of a message that would then be sent through to
> the other class. A couple of days later we got our responses – they had all
> been sent in one message, as everyone’s messages were on short pieces of
> paper that had been cut out from a long sheet. At the time it was extremely
> exciting – the idea you could get a response from overseas so quickly! –
> whereas it certainly sounds very dated and slow now. But the whole
> experience always reminds me a lot of the Interface episode in that it was
> a similar kind of introduction to sending messages online and how it was
> all very much a group experience (though without a mystery to solve).
>
> If I now look at the history of the internet in Australia I’m not sure how
> common the above experience would have been for school children in that
> period - and I can see that it may simply have been a passion project for
> that particular teacher. And I certainly do not remember the details for
> how he sent the messages through – he may well have had a contact at a
> university to facilitate it – though the concept about linking schools
> across the world was clear.
> But what it did mean that by the time I started watching PG circa 1992,
> the concepts of sending messages online didn't seem unusual from a school
> perspective. But perhaps others who watched PG at the time it was released
> had a different experience.
>
> Katie
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From:
> laura.nunn at gmail.com "Press Gang Mailing List" <pressgang at lists.yoyo.org>
>
> To:
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> Cc:
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> Sent:
> Wed, 23 Feb 2022 18:35:03 +0000
> Subject:
> Re: [pressgang] Episode 6 - INTERFACE
>
> The computer is duly won and installed with a modem (a modem, folks! In
> 1989!) and then the proper narrative starts in earnest. And oh boy, is
> there an awful lot of earnest.
>
> Let’s test out this modem then. Danny (clearly because every other main
> character was visiting their aunt in Sherrington that day) and Miss
> Hessope/Jessope (I assume it’s double-barrelled) are in the school office,
> sending wind-up messages to Lynda. There is no explanation as to why the
> school needs a computer with a modem in 1989. I think we can just assume Mr
> Winters has an ASCII porn fetish. He looks the type.
>
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