Electronic Dreams

Remember the ZX Spectrum? Ever have a go at programming with its stretchy rubber keys? Maybe you were more of a dedicated BASIC fan, and had a BBC Micro to practice developing code on? Or did you see the Acorn Electron as the future? For anyone who was a kid in the 1980s, these iconic computer brands are the stuff of legend. Computers invaded British homes for the first time in the early 1980s, with a wave of cheap, futuristic microcomputers that allowed millions of people to discover for themselves the world of computing. In those heady early days of computing, Britannia very much ruled the digital waves. Electronic Dreams looks back at how Britain embraced the home computer, and at the people who drove the boom: entrepreneurs like Clive Sinclair and Alan Sugar seeking new markets; politicians proclaiming economic miracles; bedroom programmers with an unhealthy fascination with technology; and millions of everyday folk, who bought into the electronic dream and let the computer into their lives. It is a history of home computers such as the Commodore and Spectrum, classic computer games like Jetset Willy and Elite, early information networks that led to the first stirrings of the internet, and the transformation of the computer into an everyday object in the British home. Based on interviews with key individuals, archive sources, and study of vintage hardware and software, and with a particular focus on the computer's place in social history, from the very earliest home computers to the end of the era of British dominance as IBM and a flashy new kid on the block, Apple, gradually took hold of the market, Electronic Dreams is a nostalgic look at how a depressed 1980s Britain got over its fear of microchips and embraced the computer as a 'passport to the future'.