feeling listless

TV BBC Two's The Net was a mid-nineties attempt by the channel to capture the state of technology and online culture such as it was back then with Gophers, Compuserve and Virtuality. In the past few weeks, Waxy.org's posted episodes one, two and five. Andy offers a good intelligent description of the concepts and what to look out for. As I noted in the comments, 'it does look terribly dated with all of the deliberate way of describing everything, anunciating the jargon etc. I can't help thinking though that it has much the same magazine format as Click the BBC's current show about the web and technology.'

Watching, I realised that despite having credited the programme with introducing me to internet related concepts a year before I covered them properly at university during my undergraduate Information Studies degree, I only properly remembered two things about it. Firstly, the theme music, a jangly bit of new age noodling featuring what sounds like a gamelan. But also the games reviews and specifically Jules, who I remember rather liking quite a bit (I was at that age etc). Wonder what happened to her.

I think Andy's a bit unkind about those reviews though, especially since it was one of BBC television's first real attempts at doing that kind of thing and they are done in a very fun style that attempts to suggest the excitement of games to the kinds of people who wouldn't generally play them. Television and computer games have never been good bedfellows and only rarely with shows like Bits, Thumb Bandits or Gamesmaster has it suceeded. So two cheers at least to Jules and the production team for at least trying, even if eventually tv decided that the internet and magazines would become the main source of news about the platformers or whatever it is the kids are playing now.