The UK had a booming tech industry in the 80s, didn't they? What happened then? Computers like the Amstrad, Acorn, ZX spectrum. Lots of people making homebrew programs and making tiny networks with one another. The article mentions that the British tech industry died by the 1970s due to the lack of specialized women and men. What happened to jump start it in the 80s just for it to collapse again? (genuine questions btw)
You know all those stories about companies started in garages? The garages were still an indication of being from a family that was economically well off. The mid to late 80's ushered in neoliberalism in full force and began the process of cranking the inequality back up. It was the tail end of a time where capitalists still had to fear the USSR before shifting into its fall followed by the rise of policies from people like Thatcher and Reagan. Combine that with credit card debt and whatnot and I'd bet there's a pretty good overlay of moderately secure families putting tech into the hands of young hackers and nerds just before you see it all start to crumble. Also the commodification of all that tech IP, the rise of microsoft, ibm, xerox, sun, etc. absolutely put a damper on the hacker culture.
The only real history of that I know is that guy Alan Sugar went around buying all the British hardware manufacturers and then ran them into the dirt. Now he's some idiot billionaire. My intuition is that the British home computing scene was killed because it was too easy for anyone to make their own software and distribute it. You just needed a tape deck, or you could literally send someone the raw text of the program for them to type in. So I guess there might have been problems with proprietary software/hardware getting a foothold in the UK until Apple squeezed its way in. I don't know about anything like international trade deals that could have killed it.
The UK had a booming tech industry in the 80s, didn't they? What happened then? Computers like the Amstrad, Acorn, ZX spectrum. Lots of people making homebrew programs and making tiny networks with one another. The article mentions that the British tech industry died by the 1970s due to the lack of specialized women and men. What happened to jump start it in the 80s just for it to collapse again? (genuine questions btw)
You know all those stories about companies started in garages? The garages were still an indication of being from a family that was economically well off. The mid to late 80's ushered in neoliberalism in full force and began the process of cranking the inequality back up. It was the tail end of a time where capitalists still had to fear the USSR before shifting into its fall followed by the rise of policies from people like Thatcher and Reagan. Combine that with credit card debt and whatnot and I'd bet there's a pretty good overlay of moderately secure families putting tech into the hands of young hackers and nerds just before you see it all start to crumble. Also the commodification of all that tech IP, the rise of microsoft, ibm, xerox, sun, etc. absolutely put a damper on the hacker culture.
Did they get Plaza Accorded by the Americans like Japan? Or was this purely their own brainworms fucking them over?
The only real history of that I know is that guy Alan Sugar went around buying all the British hardware manufacturers and then ran them into the dirt. Now he's some idiot billionaire. My intuition is that the British home computing scene was killed because it was too easy for anyone to make their own software and distribute it. You just needed a tape deck, or you could literally send someone the raw text of the program for them to type in. So I guess there might have been problems with proprietary software/hardware getting a foothold in the UK until Apple squeezed its way in. I don't know about anything like international trade deals that could have killed it.