Poly-1 New Zealand (Edu-Computers)

The girls talk cricket before launching into the final episode of this Education Computers season! We're heading over to New Zealand and talking about the Poly-1. It's another homegrown micro computer destined for schools and funded by a government program, but this one was crushed by corporate (specifically... Apple) interference. Before its time (and 18 months before the BBC micro), we plot its rise and then its downfall which coincided with some pretty dark moments in recent history.

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Main research for the episode was done by Camila. Ana audio edited.
Music by Nelson Guay (SoundCloud: fluxlinkages)
OFtC is a sister project of the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  

Research:
Poly Preservation Project: http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/homepages/andrew/poly/Poly.htm
https://collection.motat.nz/objects/22214/computer-poly1
https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/collection/poly1.htm
https://www.creationz.co.nz/kiwinuggets/2007/03/poly-1-educational-computer_07.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060424190744/http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3645342a28,00.html
http://www.ourdigitalheritage.org/archive/playitagain/the-poly-computer-nzs-purpose-built-school-computer/
https://twitter.com/PulpLibrarian/status/1644453795953246209
http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/homepages/andrew/papers/2010-5.pdf
http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article050106.html 

Transcript

0:14

Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, everyone. This is our friend, the computer. I'm here. This is Ana. I'm here with Camila, as I. How are you doing, Camila? I'm tired because we started really early. Yeah, we did. It was because we had a scheduling mistake. That was my fault. So I can't complain about being tired now. It's now you've got things going on in the day. No, that's not your fault. Yeah, it's a good thing, though, because like I was saying earlier, I really like the sound of morning voices. I wish I could have my morning voice. I mean, I don't like my morning fights. I'm listening back to it, but, like, I find them quite soothing. Okay, well, I'll try to be soothing and not croaky. Not croaky. How you doing? I'm good. I thought you would be interested because I went to see a cricket game last weekend, and it was Australia versus England. It was the Ashes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was the last game and it was very thrilling. We won. England Well, Australia, they are the better. They are the that team. But it was fun. Yeah, it was like I was, we were there for like 5 hours. I get kind of long realize that it's, it's long. Yeah, it's very long. It's kind of. Which is really nice. Yeah. Because it's so chill. I really enjoy going to the cricket. I like the cricket. I like having it on in the back grounds. Oh, really? Yeah. It's something that I guess I grew up having on in like the summer months and it would just be on and like, like the Olympics, you know, in the Olympics is on and it's just on the telly all the time. And then I've been to a few matches with my mom and I've been with some friends and yeah, it's just it's just really chill and relaxing and you sit and you just bring food and drinks and. Yeah, yeah. And in the sun you just watch like this massive green field and so strip in the middle. Yeah. I find it really hard to track the ball like when it's. I can't really see it very well. So I had like yo what's the reaction. It's not used to. Yeah. Yeah. Both us have was really, there was a little bit of like a spectator like beef between England and Australia because it's the Barmy Army. Is that cricket. What, the Barmy Army. It's that will you. So it's the, it's the fans of England. Oh I was sitting with people that were. Yeah. But it was so fun. I go again. Definitely. Oh let's go sometime. Yeah. Computer excursion to the cricket. Yes, that would be fun. Bring our little minotaur with us. Oh, how. How about you? How are you? Or do you just want to go straight? I might just go straight into it because to be honest, I don't know if I've been doing much. Well, this is our last episode about education. Oh, computers season. Yeah. And I've. I've really enjoyed this season. Yeah, I think it's good. We've met a lot of friends. Fun friends. Mhm. So for our last episode of the season we're going to go on a trip to New Zealand. Speaking of cricket, I guess they picked it. Yeah, and New Zealand is my favorite accent, so this is really fun for me because I got to watch lots of eighties New Zealand stuff, New Zealand stuff. It's my New Zealand accent. Good, good. Thank you. Pretty good for an Aussie fashion chops. That's the classic one to say so. So we're looking at another home grown microcomputer that's funded by a government program, but this one was crushed by corporate interference. So we'll be discussing what that looked like and then we'll be a little sad about it. Like I said, vote for her. Yeah, I'll be so. Our friend today is called the Poly one. Cool. So name? Yeah, my name. It's not a micro B, but it's fine. So we're in the late seventies, early eighties, New Zealand, two guys, Neil Scott and Paul Bryant, electrical engineering teachers at Wellington Polytechnic, which is like a vocational college. I looked it up. It's since been subsumed into like various other institutions, but that's what it was at the time. So. Neil Scott, Dr. Neil Scott, it's a lot of information about him, but less about Paul Bryant. Sorry to Paul Bryant, but he had been working on projects at Wellington Polytechnic to make computers more accessible for people with disabilities. So he was interested in developing natural language interfaces and also seems like different methods of navigation and interaction, such as gesture controls. So the first computer that he built was for a school student who and the references are kind of old on this. It sounds like they had maybe a non-verbal learning disorder. So he built a computer which could be controlled through the knees and used Morse code. I have no other information. Please don't ask follow up questions. Okay. Through the needs. Yeah, I guess Maybe. I guess. Maybe. Like the buttons. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yes. At the knees. I don't. I don't know. But apparently it was useful and worked. And. And he built a few things like this ergonomic. Yeah. Yeah. And he also was working on projects that more generally looked at how technology could be used to make math and science more appealing to schoolchildren. And yeah, I really couldn't find much about Paul Bryant, but there was more until Scott because he ended up after this project moving to the United States and he became the director of the Archimedes Project. So there's like a lot more information about him out there. And truly I couldn't find stuff about Paul Bryant. So Paul Ryan, if you are out there, tweet us or email us and we'll we'll add some information of how you got tonight. I'm sorry, of so from all of this sort of background and experience, Scott and Bryant saw a gap in the market this gap that many people around this time around the world was starting to see. And for them, it was perhaps like less of a gap in the market and more of an opening up of potential learning and accessibility opportunities to make a computer for education. So and this computer, I think I saw this mentioned one time, it was the first or one of the first of these government funded educational computers. It was released 18 months before the BBC Micro Account computer from the Computer Literacy Project. Okay, cool. Because most of the stuff we've seen has been inspired by. Yeah, yeah. The BBC Micro. Yeah, that's interesting. I, I like how we're just doing this very not chronologically like we're just going based on by into Yeah deeper and deeper into the edge of computers thing and just finding out more about the kind of predecessors of the models. But yeah, it's also, I guess another thing that I wanted to talk of I guess like reflect on it being the last episode is that it's always so weird to see how a lot of these projects were just undeniably well-intentioned and had experts leading it that were more just interested academically and in practice, in accessibility and like helping others and kind of, you know, squashing the disparities. And then these motives soon got swept up by, you know, venture capitalists or whatever. And obviously, I'm not saying that's like necessarily a bad thing, but yeah, it just must have been a crazy time for academics who specialized in these things because it must have been like inevitable for them to get approached for business, like it just must have been such a wild time for for academics that were pursuing the subject of computer literacy, which I'm sure that there was quite a lot of them. Yeah. I wonder if they felt like this is something that they wanted, you know, they're doing something yet doing this because they see that, oh, this is maybe like it could turn into a thing or they're just developing it and then they're like, Oh, wow, okay, I now have the opportunity to actually put this into practice and yeah, send it around the round the country. Yeah. So it's called the poly one because it was originally developed and designed at Wellington Poly. Technik Oh, I just, I love how it sounds like a Star Wars, but character like a it was for like maybe a BBA. C3PO Mm hmm. Polyone So in 1980 they pitched it to the Department of Education. The government liked the idea, and so they began a company called Poly Poly Corp. Poly Corp. Yeah. Cool. Love, love these Disney names. I just it's so funny to see that like these names in the eighties and nineties when companies were still called something Corp. which now just sounds blatantly evil, but I'm sure they I'm sure they were nice. I'm sure they were nice people, yeah. POLYCARP Which was a partnership between the Development Finance Corporation, which was a state funded venture capital enterprise and a New Zealand software company called Progeny Computers per Progeny Progeny Progeny Computers Ltd. So it was part of it. I mean that sounds even more evil, but it was, I guess the government was and we saw this in Canada as well, had this yeah, this like venture capital investment part of what they were doing and so that joined up with her, Jeannie and with the guys from Wellington Polytechnic and made public. So they had a development team of six engineers and technicians and it's kind of wild, but they built 50 working machines, I guess prototypes in under eight months. 50. Wow. So in 1981, they're just like ready to go in some of these 50 prototype IPS were already being trialed in local schools. So then the Education Department agreed to purchase a thousand computers over a thousand computers a year, over five years for $10 million. HUF And I've also seen this described as 16 poly ones for every school in the country. Yeah, that's got to me. That's a lot. Yeah. It's weird how it's becoming more and more clear that school children were also just like literally lab rats for testing computer machines. Really? Because this was like, that's a lot of money to spend it in schools. Yeah. And just to suddenly have the government allow enable this amount of spending in schools is kind of straight like unpredictable. There must be some kind of there must be something else going on in the background, right. Like there must be more beneath the agenda of just, just pure accessibility. Like it I mean, obviously helping the economy grow for the future, educating the young minds, blah, blah, blah. But also having these models being trialed and tested in schools is kind of a smart thing to do. Yeah, And I guess with this the government could say that, yeah, it's like computer literacy stuff so that New Zealand can, you know, have a, have a place in the future, but also that it was a homegrown thing. So it maybe was an easy sell to say, oh where we're doing this in New Zealand, everything is made in New Zealand, it's supporting New Zealand kids. Yeah. So at the time I guess the government was was into it. I think as well to, you know, make a little prototype, go in to meet with the government and like yeah, his $10 million. Mm. And also I think at this point it meant that schools could only use public ones. The idea was like this was, this was the school computer in New Zealand. Hmm. So let's take a little break and look at the public one. So the first thing that it had was color graphics, which is something that we've seen as an important component for most of these educational computers. Yeah, I mean, that's it, like you mentioned in the last episode, is just a huge selling point. Well, for children, that's like because all of these had teachers and experts kind of giving advice. And I think that was the first thing for everyone. This is it's got to be in color and something something written in a comment on classic computers that all the NZ from JEM standards who seem to be involved was at the screen used a teletext display chip and had five layers text graphics, second text second graphics and solid background color, and then a comment from someone called Manukau on a on a different blog post mentioned that even though these graphics were chunky teletext graphics, teletext didn't arrive in New Zealand until 1984, so they seemed really fresh and new to New Zealand users. I like seeing the teletext stuff come in and, and you know, we did our first season looking at quite a few teletext and video text networks and it's, it's cool to see that sort of changeover period where we had sort of teletext graphics and, and, and display chips and things can, you can see how they're being used in computers which will, you know, eventually get, get taken over by newer technology. But there's just this like one moment where they thought like crazy touch. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. So the poly one had 64 kilobytes of RAM and an enhanced eight bit CPU. And then I think like we saw in our last episode with the icon, correct me if I'm wrong, but they could be networked by Daisy chaining them together with like a floppy disk drive for storage and then you could add a printer on there if you want. And I did see someone mention, but I don't know if this actually happened that they were actually hoping for to create. So that's like a network within a classroom or within a school. But they were kind of hoping to do something with networking schools together as well. I'm not sure. I don't think they ever managed to do that, but would have would have been would have been nice. Yeah, it would have made sense If you're all using the same hardware and I know that you are probably dying to talk about it, Let's talk about charisma. Oh, yeah. And this computer has charisma, so I'm going to send you a link. Oh, like you. Here is the link. Oh, yeah. Thank you. To a picture of it. Yeah, that is it. Cut off. Oh, What do you think? It looks so eighties by it's form. It just looks like the kind of materialization of eighties. I don't know eighties esthetic like they started doing these kind of graphics for TV adverts and I don't know, it just looks like the physical version of 80 special effects where graphics are protruding from the distance to the foreground, leaving graphic trail behind. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. And I don't know, it just really shows the time of 3D graphic discovery. Like the camera's always moving in and out of things. And this is what the form of this computer represents to me, like the discovery of playing with space. It looks like that because a chunky boy, it is a long computer. It's really long and it has these handles and then it does kind of go it gets smaller at the back. And I. I know what you mean. That it. Yeah. It kind of looks like a trail. Yeah. Sort of feigns perspective like one point thing. Yeah. And it's a bit similar to the icon in that it says of all in one situation, but this, this guy's like really smooth. It's really big. It looks very simple. It has a fiberglass shell with these sort of rounded corners that is very futuristic, very syverson, very Star Trek. And then on the sides to make it even chunkier, it has these long handles like rails, almost along each side. And I guess the idea is that it could be moved easily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was wondering, like, why does it have such an elongated computer case or a computer chassis and what I can do and I just, it looks fairly normal inside so I don't, I safety. Yeah. I wonder it's all in there. Just a suitcase of a computer. It's amazing. Well it does have a full keyboard so that takes up space at the front and it has a numeric pad and has arrows and some of those keys are like bright colors and the computer itself came in six friggin colors and it was the iMac. G3 Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, but it's a very G3 to have it in all these colors. I can't find the list of colors, but the photo I sent you is cream. And then there's one other image on line and it's yellow. Nice. And I presume wear cream, yellow, blue, red, green. Yeah. Something else. Well, I mean, it's got to have plasma if it's going to be going into schools. Yeah. Different colors. Yeah. Yeah. It has very similar features also to IMAX. Like, I don't know, the rounded corners, beveled edges and it looks very similar. Yeah. And the fact that it has a high graphics card as well, the fact that you could look at the machine and kind of assume that things will just run smoothly is very, very yeah, very iMac. So it was also relatively simple to like set up. It had two cards, one for power and then one to connect to other computers for networking. So it was easy for teachers to set up. There was some mention online in comments talking about how it was actually kind of difficult to maneuver. I saw someone saying that it was too big to fit through doors easily. That's hilarious because it's just got a massive bubble, but it's just too vague. So good. And that commenter Monica said as the quote, It may have looked sexy, but the units did not break down into easily handled modules. They needed to people to carry them even between benches and a single teacher setting out could not usually move one even between classrooms. I speak from experience having put my back out with a 100 meter lug to a carpark. It's just amazing to me how when you think of a large computer, you think of it extruding outwards, like from the sides, like the, you know, the size of the screen, but you'd never think of it extending on that kind of z-axis as if, like backwards or forwards. Yeah, it's just a whole new re-imagination of computer hardware. It's fabulous. Like, you know, I don't want big screens, I want big chassis when it comes to my computer. And so the other components of the poly one was software. So we've talked about the hardware. This is the software. I think that what all of these educational computers have shown us is that before there was sort of a designated way that software existed, there was so much room for creativity and and especially produced styles of software for the poly. One poly quote worked with someone named Kevin Hurley at the Education Department to produce software and course material. This is a quote from a blog called Kiwi Nuggets. Excellent. Yes, excellent name. 60 teachers worked through the 1982 81 summer holiday to right course content into shells created in the software. Polycarp presented their product as a reliable, robust network teacher and student friendly closed system, specifically designed to deliver computer assisted learning across curricula, as well as computer awareness. Computer studies and support for school administration. So these shows were software that individual teachers could then like fill in with their specific content or curriculum. So it made it really easy to individualize the software for each classroom and for each set of students and for each teacher. While COVID era teaching could never. I wonder how different that is to the kind of lesson where idea that the icon promised with the hope. That sounds very. Yeah, but this sounds like very efficient and very yeah this doesn't sound hypertext, but it does sound useful. Yeah. And like, sharable and kind of modular. Yeah. And it was interesting because it seemed to be a thing that they wanted it to be a really stable, functional, easily upgradable system from both the hardware and the software perspective so that the schools could get these computers and essentially not need to buy anything else for a really long time, says a quote. Dr. Scott says it was designed as industrial embedded technology, similar to the computers that run everyday processes such as traffic lights, so that unlike other PCs, the poly one would keep working without becoming obsolete. Hmm. And so while this is admirable and useful and all things great, it kind of ushered in the downfall of the Polyone and poly colt because as you can imagine, a technology that does have become obsolete is not something that corporations necessarily want in the world. Yeah, and there's a few things that play in this part of the story, and it goes off on some tangents, and some of those tangents are a bit dark. So I tried to I tried to put it in an order that makes sense. So let's get into the topic section of this podcast. So we're in New Zealand where in late 1981 and there is an election, the National Party, which is a Conservative party and who had already been in power, narrowly wins the election by one seat. So business interests have a little more, are a lot more lobbying power over the government, particularly about how the government shouldn't be involved in business. And it turns out surprise, surprise us companies like Apple and IBM aren't super thrilled that this government deal with Polycarp. It's essentially locking them out of the New Zealand market, educational market. And also, like you said, the schools are only allowed to polyone in them, right? Well, yeah, but also even if I'm wrong and they could buy other computers like the poly ones for free. Yeah. And also I guess Apple and IBM and things would be upset not just for that market, but you know, when children are growing up with a particular brand, they're more likely to continue buying those products. And also, I guess maybe establishing a trend that they didn't want to extend to other countries of home grown computers and then not being able to get into those markets. So they lobby the New Zealand government and the government rescinds its purchase agreement with Polycarp. So no thousand polygons each year for five years. Of the ten yea of the $10 million, Polycarp only received $64,000. Wow. Which I think was probably the money that they used to make those 50. Yeah. Which is again, not that much, no way. So like evil sounding, but in reality good Polycarp is defeated by Keith sounding, but in reality, evil Apple and IBM. Yeah, yeah. It's really sad. And this is like this is late 81. So I think they pitched it. Oh, it was accepted in 1980, 82, 81. They, they built that. Yeah. The fact that the pitch was accepted and the budget was made and then suddenly they're like, well, we've got the budget, we're not going to give it to you. And a quote from that Kiwi Nuggets article was Cabinet Minister Warren Cooper told Perth's Pearse Hartman that he and his colleagues, quote, could see no reason why government should spend money so the teachers could do even less work. Oh my God, that now that's evil. That's Warren Cooper is the antagonist in this Desmond Disney movie. No, I don't want to get sued. Cooper Court Yeah, Allegedly. Allegedly. There was also in that blog post a little chat about how perhaps there were some connections between Ex-national party ministers or workers who were stakeholders in the U.S. computer companies. So there's like some other stuff going on, I think I'm sure they've got their hands in loads of pies. There's also another strange side to this story, so that $10 million promised by the government and I guess where it went instead. So I only saw this mentioned one time in my research. It was in the slides of a presentation by Bob Doran and Andrew Trotman, and it said that the $10 million went towards funding the Springbok tour. Do you know about this? No. So speaking of sport, I guess the Springbok, the South African Rugby Union team and rugby is really big in New Zealand and there is, I think, a rivalry between the Springbok and the All Blacks, which is the New Zealand team. And there was a planned tour so the South African team would be coming to New Zealand to play New Zealand. Mm hmm. But this is 1981, which was during apartheid to shoot and other kind of I don't want to swear on this either. Other countries had a sports boycott for South Africa, but I guess not New Zealand. And the government was in favor of this tour. They were saying something like, Oh, we shouldn't mix politics and sport or something. Oh my God. But it was widely opposed by New Zealanders. There was widespread protests and it ended up being like the major issue of the 1981 election. And the quote is more than 150,000 people took part in over 200 demonstrations in 28 centers, and 1500 were charged with offenses stemming from these protests. So it's like a really big deal. Huge. Yeah. Yeah, I guess the government went through the like they won. And then there's that money to fund the Tories. So twisted I. Yeah Lucky was up and yeah, there was like a whole international sports boycott like, like a global. But I guess. Yeah. Ri rerouted computer money said eff that. Yeah. I mean I'd love to God it's so bad. But truly it was just a line. It was in I think it was in brackets as in parentheses too. It was like used for the Springbok to a like okay, God. So let's go back to the poly. Oh yeah. The result of this was that schools were allowed to purchase whatever computers they wanted, essentially. So the whole idea had been that with every school using the same computer and teachers developing this software, the shows curriculum could be shared and developed and there would be consistency in the hardware used and schools wouldn't need to keep purchasing new expensive hardware and software every few years. It was meant to be an investment, but with the government reneging on the deal, the stream was essentially down the drain and public hope was kind of on their own. And this is when the cost comes into play. The poly one was really, really, really expensive and it wouldn't have been an issue when the government was funding the program. But it became a really big problem once schools could buy their own, like make their own choices and the computers that they bought. So like once the schools computer program was open to the market, ah, I guess like they didn't get the free one from the, from the government. And so they had these, they had options. I found the cost of the poly from 1983. So in 1983 the cost of a poly one is $8,090 and the cost of an apple two for schools is 4800, which is already like a big difference. And then this just goes to show how seriously Apple was taking this threat. Apple gives every New Zealand school a free apple to and then it offers additional computers if they want them for 1200. Oh, wow. Sorry. Yeah. Molycorp did have some luck in protesting this and got customs to put an additional fee on these computers, but still only brought up the price to 20 $22,020. So it's 20 $20 versus $8,090 and you already have a free one time. Yeah. Yeah. There's no winning that. Another big blow to the project around this time was a media smear campaign, and I don't know who started it, but it definitely existed. So essentially when when you, Scott and Paul Bryant at Wellington Polytechnic started the project, they made a prototype out of like off shelf components, which is I guess what they showed to the government to get the deal, to make the WiFi. And they gave it a, they had a name, the name was poly wog, which is another name for a tadpole or the love of a frog or a toad, but unfortunately sounds very similar to a racist term that is very dated and no longer in use. And the media was sort of saying that it had a racist name, which, you know, it sounds similar to it's one letter off this racist slur. Yeah. So the media like why you've why is the government funding why are taxpayers money going towards a conflict as it's like racist so the schools weren't super inclined to purchase the poly one. There's a lot of weird like racist stuff in this. So yeah if I be this era. Yeah, sounds very. But you know, it's called the poly because it's poly for poly they were trying to find a that's like a normal word. They were trying to find a word that used poly from polytechnic. Yeah. And I guess they saw this word and it means the tadpole which is good for students like children and growing up. Right. Like being hatched. They just maybe shouldn't have used it, shouldn't have done it. They changed it was to poly one, two, poly one. Oh right, right, right, right. You know, I guess they were trying to be cute. We had the micro bee in Australia so like, oh, it's like a tadpole. But um, but they, you know, they weren't very Todd Poly. I know. Look, it was a bad choice. They've said that they were pretty racist in articles. I mean, alongside all the, like apartheid. Yeah. Conversation it was, it was. I can see how it was fun. There would be more of Yeah, that would be more of a focus on that. Yeah. And I'm glad that that wasn't the name of this to say it was kind of the death knell for the poly one. And at this point, most of the original poly team had left, leaving the progeny software company to take the reins of the project. And while they did sell some to schools with the Apple twos and IBM clones taking over the education market, prettiness signed a deal with Guess who? The Australian Army Gray. And so that would lead to the creation of the poly too. And I guess that the army had like the muscles to carry the computers around and then they expanded into China through a deal with a Chinese mining company, which would lead to the creation of the policy for which Padini apparently developed the world's first graphics processor for Chinese characters. Oh wow. However, the Chinese do ended up falling through because it was 1989. You know what happened in 1989 and know the Tiananmen Square protests. Yeah, it fell through in the eighties. Yes, sure. Time. Yeah, I did. Every every step of this second half of this research, I just was like, Oh, no. Okay. So I think Polycarp was so trying to continue in some way, you know, like late eighties. Yeah, but it was too late, you know, by this point, the, the big, the big corporations have kind of settled into the market and both the I think they were there was plans but then both the development Finance Corporation from the government and progeny computers became insolvent. So then Poly Corp. closed 1990 as a consequence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting to see the progression here and how it was later, how the computer was later used in industries like all its different models. Because, you know, we talked about this the other day reflecting on our pre-Internet net network session where online networks do not just come from the kind of classic narrative of them being routed in the military and defense advanced research projects, which we know is the story of the US World World Wide Web. But in fact you can kind of go further back than that and discover these untold stories of socialist or accessibility projects like Cyber Sin and OJ. Yes, and I guess you could say the same for the evolution of the poly ones where it's from 1 to 2 to see, like, I don't think young humanitarian Neill Scott would have predicted, you know, that he'd be making the machines for the Australian Army but it's yeah, it's, it's it's good that we're like uncovering the story of poly one and these kind of like the true intentions of the, the initiation of it rather than the fact that the later just that the fact that the later models were used in in all these other projects. Yeah. I mean it's, it's been really nice to see physically how much teachers were involved in a lot of these projects and, you know, bringing in experts and trying to develop specific software and hardware for like that countries children and it, you know, there's some nationalistic sort of parts of all of this as well. But yeah to look at the individuals and and thinking about these teachers they're just like excited about computers and into learning to code so they can teach better and you know be able to engage students more. And I don't know it's it's it's nice it's just sad that every single time it crashes and burns. Yeah. And it's also really telling that that you know, the quote that you had from Warren Cooper, you know, where he's like could see no reason why government should spend money so that teachers could do even less work. Like the fact that this was this is said and this was published shows that this was really this could have been like a revolutionary kind of technology for for making lives easier for teachers or to kind of have a positive stance on automation is always very difficult to achieve. But yeah, the fact that this was like a big point of a debate is I think, quite telling of, of, of where this could have gone and how how much potential it had. Yeah, there was I think I saw Neil Scott talking in an article about how New Zealand, the new Zealand government just kind of missed a really big opportunity both financially in terms of the software that they were developing, but then also kind of just long term thinking about education in New Zealand and that it could have been something really great and instead ended up in something that New Zealand, you know, could control for themselves but ended up being this of U.S. corporate thing. There's a there's an article from 2006 about Neil Scott, which is where a lot of the Neil Scott stuff comes from. And there's a quote quoting the article now, 25 years after the Polyone schools have the same problems with computers. They're paying too much for hardware and software that's too complicated for the teachers to use properly and getting more complex each year. And then a quote from Dr. Scott Obsolescence is the theme for running the computer industry. That's how the computer industry makes money out of schools. The education system is a cash cow. Most of the problems we addressed with the Polyone are still there. Hell yeah. Preaching to the crowd. He's not wrong. This is so true. It's funny because it's still happening today. It wasn't just happening in the eighties. Like it reminds me of this meme I saw the other day about the internet and it's it kind of goes through the, I guess, the obsolescence of the Internet as well and how we're sort of like how we've gone backwards. The more it's kind of been used as a marketing tool, the less it's it's retained, It's kind of designed. But yeah, the me the meme goes like Reddit is committing Sudoku. Musk is turning Twitter into the new gab. I don't know what that is. I don't know. Instagram is an aging millennial, desperately clinging to what's left of their youth. Facebook is a nursing home. YouTube is a clickbait farm. Tik Tok is a CCP propaganda outlet. Data collection Honeypot New media in quotes. Companies like Gawker, Vice, BuzzFeed have been absorbed back into the old corporate media ecosystem. Google, Wikipedia, etc. are getting flooded with bot generated beats after faster than any one can keep up with. Zoomers are too dumb to figure out where WordPress blogs with RSS feeds the public internet is over. Hope you all had fun. Oh god. I mean, you said this episode was going to be dark, so I'm just. Yeah, I'm just running along with a theme here. I mean, also something interesting to you and that I found was another comment by a maduka that said since this holy one reflection began, I've had quite an involvement with the OPC One Laptop Per Child, XO Laptop, its rise Evangelical hype and now apparent fall during 26,009 era has been very similar to the poorly ones 81 to 84 heyday. In spite of neither machines succeeding as such. Both, of course, was responsible for new tech trends educationally. In the old case the netbook explosion this person knows about as your computers. Yeah, I mean it's true. I although I criticized them in my episode a little bit, they obviously were ahead of the netbooks for sure so got to give them credit for that. And the the polyone was ahead of the G3. G3 Yeah, definitely her. Yeah. Look, it got dark at the end. I'm sorry. I'm ending out. No, it's good. Sees it on that note, but I guess it just, you know, it goes to show how much computers have always been integrated into kind of questions of politics and yeah, and society like it's a huge, huge discussion topic of debate for for society like it's like an object that people can point to and kind of analyze And yeah, this was it was great. I thought I think this was a really good ending. I think the really good ending to the to the seeds it I like that it's a little melancholic. I think that's a good thing. So there is a poly preservation projects. If you want to know more. Oh great. Andrew Trotman And we'll put a link in the show notes alongside the research links, but they have an emulator and links to a lot of articles and even some PDFs of like training manuals and things. I had a little fun rifling through them. I might put some of my selected favorite favorite graphics Instagram and yeah, so if you want to know more, that's the place to go. You know, it's the end of our season and I'm sad, but I'm excited for the next and I think the next season that we're going to tackle is on mobile phones, on cell phones, right? We decided that was a listener suggestion. Mm. And I saw a bunch of weird ones at the museum, so we're excited. Oh, cool. That's not looking into that. But we're going to take a little summer break and I think when we come back, we also might change up the structure a little bit and maybe start doing some interviews and get some researchers and computer tech history people on to have some chats as well. So yeah, I'm excited for that. Thank you so much for listening along with us. If you enjoy it and you got this far, please leave a review and some stars in your podcast app of choice. Very grateful for that. And follow us on Instagram and on Twitter and we have a website. What is it, Ana, our friend, The computer. Computer, Yeah. And I hope you all have like a really wonderful summer or winter, depending on your hemisphere. Yeah, Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. I can't wait for what's coming next. Yeah, just really excited. I've been doing a lot. A lot. A lot of research, and I'm going to be on. I'm going to be going on holiday in a few days for like two weeks. I'll be reading up on all of that stuff and just, yeah, nerding out on the beach, you got to have a balance. I have a balance I am for. Yeah, it must be netting out in my. That's good too. Yeah. Thank, thank you so much. I can't wait for the next one and hope everyone has a fabulous, luscious, delicious summer or winter. Delicious, luscious winter with true. All right, thanks, everyone. Bye. Thank you. Bye.