Hardware, Software, Anywhere

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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Hardware, Software, Anywhere

Nick Baker collects some programmes about how technology has changed our physical world.

Once, technology was hardware-based.  Then came software.  Now, digital advances, like virtual reality, can put us anywhere. Nick Baker showcases BBC archive to trace the changes

Nick Baker reflects on how the impact of technology has changed, from the dawn of language to the age of virtual reality - via a three hour showcase of archive programmes and interviews.  

Hour 1:  HARDWARE: 

*     Fry's English Delight:  
Stephen Fry ponders the physicality of written language, from its earliest scrawlings to the digital age.  

*     The Persistence of Analogue 
Tech-writer Leigh Alexander says despite the boundless conveniences of the digital world, it can sometimes feel like something's been lost in the transition to an always-on virtual society. 

Hour 2:  SOFTWARE 

Nick revisits two of the past music software formats that used to dominate. 

*     The Curse of the Cassette
From 1997 - Nick Baker recalls the downside of a design classic, yet  much reviled format. 

*     The AB of CD 
From 1988 - Simon Bates looks at what the then revolutionary medium would bring to pop music and Nick meets Simon Rooks from the BBC archives.  

Hour 3: ANYWHERE

Nick looks at bigger changes in our physical perceptions, and experiences a new medium – Virtual Reality, as developed in the BBC Virtual Reality hub.  

*     The Digital Human - Between
In addition to virtual reality, Aleks Krotoski, probes a different, more subtle way in which digital tech changes our perception of personal space.  

Nick rounds off his showcase with a warning from literature, and from history. 

Stephen Fry joins him to discuss the 1909 novella, 'The Machine Stops' which envisages a physical world changed, if not destroyed by technology.  But what happens when that technology breaks down?

Producer: Stephen Garner

Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra and first broadcast in 2019.

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