ICON Canada (Edu-Computers)

Camila and Ana chat about Canada’s first standardised and purpose-built computer for eduction, the Icon. Prior to launching in 1984, it made promises of a hypertext learning utopia where it simplified lives of both students and teachers. The girls kick off by exploring the definition of failure (after Camila had gone to see the Minitel at the Museum of Failure), and end by discussing the criticisms of top-down government projects that stumped potential hypertext projects.

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And Instagram @ourfriendthecomputer

Main research for the episode was done by Ana who also 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.  

References:
- Musuem of Failure, https://museumoffailure.com/
- Wierzbicki, Barbara, “Icon: Canada’s system for schools”, InfoWorld, 7 Nov 1983, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0C8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA33&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
- UNISYS > Icon, www.old-computers.com, https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=971
- Eckert, Jason, “ Ontario’s Computer: The Burroughs ICON”, 3 Apr 2022, https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/icon-computer/

Transcript

0:14

Hello. Welcome to our friendly computer. This is Ana and joined by Camila Galaz. How are you doing? You asking me? You're asking the. I'm asking you. How am I doing? I'm good. I'm good. What have you been up to? How's your week been so far? It's been good. I actually there were a couple of things, like tech history stuff I did that I thought we could chat about. Yeah. You went to the Museum of Failure? Yeah, I went to this place. It's called the Museum of Failure in Brooklyn. I love that name. I went because they have a minotaur, and I love I love my minutos. And I've actually still never seen one. No, I have definitely had a lot of them in person. Yeah, I think we've seen they were at the computer history museums, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true. Did they? Yeah, they did. They did. They did. I think I remember it, but I've never seen one like, work. Like working. Like, wasn't working. You saw the Eduardo Cortes was. Yeah. And they were playing very cool animations on it. But there was a minute till in the museum a failure. Does that mean that they that they claimed that it. Yeah. Failed. Yeah. This was my issue. Oh yeah. I guess this, this, this museum of failure is they gave me a ticket to go. I'm very grateful. It. It was cool. They have a lot of old tech stuff. Some stuff I hadn't seen. They had quite a few, like weird mobile phones and. Yeah. Wait, I want to know what mobile phones they were using. They had that one that was like an ESPN mobile phone where it was does that it was like a flip phone, but it was designed to be to like, watch sports on. And I had one that was like a taco fart. That's what they called it. I can't remember. It's like, I think you could play games on it, maybe, but then you had to, like, hold it weirdly against your ear. Yeah. They had also, like different media format stuff. So like Sony mini tests and laser discs and things. Mm hmm. Yeah, I guess the idea is that it's like all these, like, objects that failed, but I wasn't really sure about what failure meant. Like the criteria. Yeah. Because also, you know, like, we look at, I guess, what you would call tech failures, but, but it's not it's, it's just because they commercially fail does mean that they socially failed. It doesn't. Yeah. Or even inspire it into the public. Yeah. Or even that we that it doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't mean it was a failure. Yeah. So the minotaur one, it was interesting because they had like this big list, they have these little like funny pun, pun based descriptions of all the objects. And for the Minotaur one, it was a list of like all the things you could do on the Minotaur, like banking and buying tickets. But then after each one they would have like in brackets search for porn. So it was like a joke that people were using. But like we did a few episodes on the Minotaur and like a specific one on Minotaur Rose Like the sexy side of Minotaur, which was a really big part of the network, but it just felt like it. I don't know. It diminished it a little bit. And that a quote from a thing said As the Internet became the norm in the rest of the world, France clung to its antiquated technology until they finally unplugged the Minotaur in 2012. It has been argued that the Minotaur delayed France's transition to the Internet by a decade. But. But does that mean that it was the finding that was a success as Yeah, and I think that's a failure of the Internet at that time so that I couldn't offer anything extra that the Intel wasn't already offering. So it was nice to see it. But I also felt sad that it was there. There was also there a mechanical calculator, which we talked about last episode with the like silicon chip revolution destroying the industry. And this was I still I also don't know if this is a failure because it was a failure to like, see that this new chip was going to like the microchip was going to destroy the industry and they didn't innovate, I guess. But I don't know that like the mechanical calculator was incredibly successful. Things can't last forever. Yeah, yeah. Imagine how many calculations and things that it like. How much the mechanical calculator would have invented in directly like especially during the industrial revolution. How often time, how often it was used during that era. What kind of like things it allowed people to produce were extremely successful. Right. Yeah. Like without the mechanical calculator, we probably wouldn't have trains. Without the mechanical calculator, we wouldn't have the electronic pocket calculator. Exactly. So, yeah, I don't know. It's fun to go. I guess it's it's like a pop exhibition and I suppose we approach things with a little bit more nuance. I guess maybe it's, it's the type of museum that will like, want to, like, trigger a conversation about what exactly failure means and why we perceive these things to be failures, even though to some people they're not. I can imagine it's like more of like a museum of of semantics, right. Or like how you define certain words rather than like the objective reality of them. Right? I mean, things that are commercially successful can also be failures on a bunch of levels. Yeah, and I guess the conversation is like, how do you define success and failure? And I don't know if the exhibition answered that question, but I think the the goal of the exhibition is to maybe spark the conversation. And there was a wall at the end of like Post-it note, if you like, put up Post-it notes on this wall. And it was like, What is your personal failure? And a lot of people were saying things that weren't personal values. It's like the mayor or like, I don't know, I just like political things. Someone did post one on the wall that said their personal failure was they failed at starting a podcast. Oh, that wasn't me. I didn't I didn't say that. But yeah, so it's it's called the Museum of Failure. It's open until June 18th in Brooklyn at Industry City. They also have an app. I think it's like M0 x, I think the X is for failure and it has I think I don't I didn't download it because it was too big. My phone didn't have enough space. That's my first no failure. But I think it has like a list of all of the objects that they have so interested in seeing some stuff. And then I also went and saw of the BlackBerry movie. Oh, yeah, it no, it's it's good. It's fun. Yeah. I mean, it's very like yeah, yeah. Alley I guess it's about the rise of the BlackBerry phone or I guess more specifically, the company that sort of started it research in Motion and then kind of having the idea for it and then not really knowing like how to navigate the business world and this other guy coming in who's a bit of like like a nasty business guy. Yeah. Like he his sort of out for his own gain, knows how to navigate stuff and kind of it's this friction between the ideals of the original guys and the sort of want for money and success and like, do those things mesh or not. And yeah, I mean it was fun. It there were a lot of wigs and I was wearing wigs. It was distracting. I want to look up the original like the people that they're portraying. Yeah. If the to see if it is I mean they were wearing wigs I or you never know it was like what from the nineties. Nineties. Yeah. Could be that would make a lot of sense because they were very intense of the Yeah yeah yeah. And it was interesting It's also interesting because like there's just they were just no women, there were no women and there was one scene in the story and I can't remember the exact was like a group of people and this like new boss guy comes in and he says something like very masculine. I don't know if it was like, Oh, you dudes need to whatever, whatever. And then they just like pan to this one woman that's sitting in the room and she's kind of like a but that was literally the pilot, like they knew what they were doing, but added, I mean, it's based on original story. So I guess they were doing women. No, I guess no, I'm sure there were, and I'm sure there weren't. But then it's again, why would you want to make a documentary about a bunch of dudes? It's kind of appealing to me. But yeah, it was just it was just the time. I get that I've been seeing quite a lot of, like, biopics about emerging tech stories from the nineties or the eighties. Like, I saw this one trailer for like Tetris. Oh, I saw that. But it's not about it's really like I find it really boring because they just talk about the business side of it. They don't really talk about the how the game was created or the back story of that, because the story about Tetris isn't actually about the guy that invented the game. It's only about the guy that found the game and then commercialized it. And to me, that's like the honestly, that to me that's the part of the boring part. Like, yeah, well, I mean, like I make films and I do screenwriting and stuff and there's some stories that I've been thinking about unpacking in more of like a tech history stories. I mean, thinking about unpacking more factionalized screenwriting way rather than like AL episodes or other podcasts that we're working on. But it is so I have I've been paying attention that there is maybe a bubble ed of of these like tech nostalgic tech history stories. But it's I mean, it's just I mean, the BlackBerry one is based in Canada, but it is it's still that same like corporate Oregon corporate story. It's like it's very much about like these commercial most like it's motivational stories about business tech. Business success is like it's the type of like movie that, you know, Cisco would watch to, like, hype their employees up about the projects that they're doing or like growth projects and which is I'm sure is fun for for anyone that's in like tech consulting. But to me, that's I want to know about the non commercial side of things. Yeah but then you know Hollywood is a machine and you know, and they stories are good within that framework. You know maybe if this was made in like it was like an indie. Mm. French film or something like, you know, like maybe that would be an indie French film about 8 minutes and I want to see I would have been interested to see, like the use of BlackBerry, maybe a little bit more than it was first used by, you know, stockbrokers, lawyers, and then suddenly teenagers were using it to send each other BBM text messages. And then that was I remember I oh, it was part of it in ages. But they're talking about how they created a way to send data, data based messages. Cool. Yeah, because then it was used by like all of my friends in 2000, I started I had my first BlackBerry, I think in 2000 and I never had 12 maybe or 2010. And all of my friends had a BlackBerry. And it was hilarious because we were all like teenagers, but we're using this technology that their dads would use. Yeah. And then and then the use of that technology changed. So it was again, very classic. Like a mobile phone story where it was first used by the workforce and by industries, and then it was used for more social or personal uses by women or teenagers and then the use of the phone. And that technology changed and also changed as hardware. So now you have like iPhones where it's more use for social networking and texting, whereas originally the telephone was really just invented for business. So yeah, quite interesting story line there. The thing that I found the most interesting, which wasn't really highlighted, was the I mean, it was important to the plot, but I kind of wish that it had played a larger role was the shift from telecommunications companies prioritizing minutes versus data? Mm hmm. So like, that plays a role in like the downfall. But yeah, like, so BlackBerry kind of invented or the way they set out sort of the idea of like database messaging. And then when you shift into the iPhone because that's that's kind of a big part of the plot as well is like when the iPhone comes out, like what? And the iPhone is data based on all of these, like, you know, other ways. And so it was like that shift, like the BlackBerry to the iPhone changed the way that we monetize mobile phones. Yeah. Yeah. And so before it was based on like minutes or based on like sending a text and then it started being more about like the clips of your phone is more about like the data that you're that you're paying for. And, and most of our messages are now done by a data and like that's what we even our phone calls. So I think that shift actually was like a really big cultural moment. Yeah. And it was interesting to see how it sort of played out. But I yeah, I kind of wish it was stronger in the film, but it was based in Canada, which I thought was really interesting because we've done a couple of episodes of stuff based in Canada and I'm intrigued about the way that their governmental systems are set up or were set up to do like funding of tech, because it seems like that was a big thing. And then I realized that our episode today that you're going to tell me about is set in Canada. So yeah, I'm excited. So learn more. Yeah, no, it's true. That is a good segue way. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this episode because, you know, it's about how edge your computers also called computers to more creative uses than just programing because we talked about um, edu computers so far in a little bit more of like the context of how how code was taught in schools. And I think this is one of the first instances where a computer for education was invented that was supposed to be placed in subjects that were just it or programing related. Yeah, we're doing this like series of that educational can computers like hardware, but also the sort of government programs that initiated them and like why they were seen as really important and worth investing in. And we did the BBC one, the British one last last episode. We did the Micro Bee. We did the micro bee. Yeah. Yeah. So yes, please tell me tell me about. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, due to the boom of microcomputers in the seventies and eighties, educational institutions were becoming more aware of the fact that, you know, computers should be used in schools and aid the curriculum in general. And as we saw in some of our recent episodes, like you mentioned, the BBC Literacy Project and the Doomsday Project or even Calico and the Micro Bee societies were in for metastasizing, which is a word we keep referring to from our Captain episodes. It's such a good word. I like it. It's great. I also enjoy that neither of us can say it properly. We can say properly like it doesn't. It shows up as a as an incorrect word, but we've made it up, so that's fine. Um, but yeah, so policy makers and ministers in some cases were very keen to like marry computer skills with the school curriculum because they just wanted, you know, literacy, computer literacy to be part of the mainstream. They wanted their young workforce to be very productive in the future and they wanted to set them up for a successful, like, productive society. So in Canada, specific weekly, the Ontario Ministry of Education believed that computers are incredibly important for tech literacy and that the world of the near future, in quotation marks, requires an understanding of these new machines. When when was this? Because it's interesting. I like to think back to the BBC Computer Literacy project, where that was like the late seventies that really started to be thought about and they really had to convince the government to do something about it like that. It was important and it was sort of this like public outcry based on a TV special that got it to sort of start getting going. It was interesting that they that Canada was just kind of like, yep, this is we got to do it. Yeah, No, that's a really good point. Yeah. In this case it was totally flipped the other way round. So the government was actually the ones that were pushing for this change rather than the public wanting to fight for this change and having to like almost lobby the government to make these policies. But yeah, this was in 1981. So yeah, like a few years after, microcomputers were part of mainstream commercialization and production. But the person who was the kind of the spokesperson and basically the, the, the one that was like in charge of this project of informative sizing, the young the young producers, the young in the economy. She was called Betty Stevenson. And yeah, so she was the minister of Education and she decided to form this advisory committee on Computers and Education. And she yeah, oversaw the shift to having computers in schools. And this committee committee was very successful in gathering information about the kids, what they needed, how things worked in schools and wanted to kind of set up a general budget for this advancement and what that scope would then be able to provide. And so they found that many schools implemented computers already. But this would depend on multiple factors. So for example, the wealth of the school in the area, if they had computers at all, it depended on whether the teachers had the time to learn to adapt to the their curriculum type and whether they were necessary for the subjects in that school because you would only really have computers at the time if you were teaching I.T. or programing. So some schools didn't even teach that. That's something that we're saying a few times, isn't it, that the idea of and I'm sure it's going to come up here, but that idea of like computers being used in classrooms specifically to learn about computers, because then it's like they're like, oh, this is important because people need to learn programing and things versus computers being in classrooms to aid in learning other things like maths and English and things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Like some classes obviously didn't need a computer at all, but like I'll get to later. The project did try to squeeze in computers into subjects where they were traditional, they used and uh, they, they implemented things like games to make that happen. But yeah, I'll get to that later. But most importantly, brands and models really vary depending on what the hardware was able to give to that subject. So the most popular microcomputer for Canadian schools was the Commodore P t, which had a built in support for Microsoft Basic, which we covered last time, which as we know was very popular in I and programing classes. And then there was the Apple two, which was also very common because it had some educational software on it, but it was mostly aimed at early education. So the Apple ones were very graphics based and then the Commodore were a programing based and they were a bit faster. So Stephenson wanted something that was more all encompassing, something that had programing support, a high graphics card because children are very visual learners and support curriculum guidelines that require a lot of storage as well. That's kind of um, yeah, the story with the with the ABC Micro and the Australian Micro B where it was like what was on the market just wasn't suitable for children or like engaging even for adult learners. And so like trying to consult with teachers and create hardware that actually was like useful for learning versus hardware that's useful, just like for the production of like programing and things. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think quite a lot of people clocked on to the fact that it there was a, that the educational system was like a huge gap in the market of, of the acceleration of microcomputer production. Yeah. Um and so the Apple two was really kind of like as close as you could get to good educational software and it still just wasn't good enough. And since the main edge computers that were available were like the micro, which was really only designed for programing, again, there wasn't much hardware specifically designed for overarching educational software. And so they wanted computers that were meant for information retrieval rather than just coding. Is that what do you mean by information retrieval or is that just that dichotomy of the learning? Yeah, through it. Well, it's coding on it, so. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So basically learning from it rather than using it to make stuff. So obviously they didn't really have access to the Internet. The Internet was really invented at that time. So they wanted, like they wanted something where instead of like reading a book about the subject, you could read it on the computer on your and Carter Encyclopedia. Exactly. Maybe have it like it be a little bit more interactive, maybe play game alongside it, and I'll get into the teaching logistics of that later. So they made the icon computer and this was just the best of both worlds because it was similar to the Commodore since it was an all in one machine and you could program do programing on it, but it also had a high graphics card like the Apple two and the icons showed 16 bit graphic, graphic user interface like systems, which was very novel for the time where, you know, most computers were eight bit and it took various programing languages including basic Pascal Fortran and C, which just came out in the late seventies and C is, you know, a pretty big starter for a lot of programing languages that we use today. And JavaScript basically. So yeah, this all sounded very exciting to the ministry and in 1983 they announced that they were to fund this new computer for the uses for schools particularly, and they figured that even with spending budget to make around 6000 machines, it was still cheaper for the government because it reduced maintenance costs as the machines were all standardized and their builds initiated a more kind of like consistent flow in the development of edu computers. So they were like, Let's do this. It's going to be great for the economy, it's going to be great for the industry. Um, you know, let's go for it. They employed the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance Carter to develop specs for the machines. So yeah, it was kind of this classic homegrown tech project made by the country to support the country, you know, type of narrative, um, which we love to see. We love to see it I guess. I guess we love to see it. We love it, but, but there's always about but of course it was easier said than done after it had come out in 1984. The project was more popular among what? Ah yeah. Tech people I know, right? Yeah. Truly, the project was more popular amongst the tech people than the education people. So I did well. It boosted the microcomputer industry like of the like because they were getting money to make computers. Yeah, they were getting money to make computers. They were also like, really like pushing the boundaries of what computers were doing at the time. And people thought it was like a great achievement actually, but it weighed quite heavy, heavily on educators. So teachers were concerned with two things. One, that the machine wouldn't be powerful enough to host all their needs, and two, that it would take too long to learn. Very similar to One Laptop per Child project. They just kind of believed that other things could be funded instead of the microcomputer. I mean, it it is kind of this thing of like how if you can say, oh, like let's put computers in the schools, the teachers have to learn this whole new technology and teach it to children. And then like maybe they're not using it to learn programing, maybe they're using it to learn like touch typing or spelling or something like that. With these games. But the reality is at this point, like the kids probably could learn those skills better. I mean, touch having, but bit better without the computer. But having the computer integrated into all of these different subject areas was like the key part of forming like a digitally literate generation. And so like the success of it is not something that could necessarily be seen at that time. And I can imagine that that would feel like a lot of work and a really big shift for teachers to like move into that when they when they know how. You'd need very specific teachers that were like excited about new technology. Yeah, definitely. And see the benefits of like how that would make their job easier. Yeah. And especially if you like working to curriculum and then you're suddenly having to incorporate this other thing. Yeah, I don't know. I get it. I get it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the critics were wrong about the first concern. The machine was very powerful. It was almost too powerful, and it came out because it was amazing for the standard of the time. It had a trackball for the pointing the mouse. It came with a headset, with a built in voice synthesis. Oh, the computer had a processor that enabled multitasking operating systems as the CPU was the Intel 80186 Of course it becomes relevant later on. Okay. Oh, I remember it also supported color graphics and the keyboard had accented characters for the French. He's a French. It's the color. The color graphics thing is interesting. I feel like that's come up so many times with these educational computers where it's the thing that when they, like, consult with teachers about like what's important for kids color graphics is something that has just come up time and time again. That didn't happen, that wasn't really existing before. And I don't know if it's like that. That was before these computers were invented versus like before just this time that computers had reached the point where they could have it. But yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense. It makes sense again, like kids are just all visual learners and like, they need visual references to like, learn stuff. But yeah, the color graphics was like a pretty big thing for the icon and it's pretty big. Like selling point. There was also no storage on the computer itself, but it relied on hard drives that connected to a networked server called the Lexicon. Lexicon like lexicon, Yes. Oh my God, it does. I can't stand for something. I couldn't find this out. I don't know if I'm just being dumb, but I couldn't find. I feel like the person that named then Networks of a lexicon. Yes. Are happy with themselves. Yeah. Have been very chuffed. Yeah. So it didn't have a floppy, which is a very, very ahead of its time. Although actually after a while you could still use floppies to copy things to it, but you had to use Unix commands to do this. So this came in like a later version, but the first version that came out didn't have a floppy. So everything was housed on this server exactly like an external drive. Yeah. And this was like a network server that the school would use. Yeah. So each school would have their own network. Yeah. Interesting. Like their own, like, hard drives. Yeah. Yeah. So Robert Arn, who was a member of the Carter team, set up Camp Corp, which was the Canadian Educational Microprocessor Corporation, which then got the $10 million grant or contract to build these machines. And various other parts of other institutional money were awarded to the team throughout the time. But again, like note that this is all in Canadian dollars, So this might be a bit of a sense that maybe it's like less. It's more. Yeah, it's less USD. Yes. Yeah. But still like quite a lot of money. It needed to meet these like criteria. So there was this grant eligible microcomputer systems or gems. Oh, that's a notification acronym. Yeah, they're all fabulous. Chem Chem Corp is kind of core to gems like, like Lexicon, I think whatever icon stands for. Yeah. So these specifications made it a little bit more expensive to build, but eventually the computer sold for 495 CAD, which was thankfully still less expensive than most other microcomputers. This kind of sort of brings into play that idea. I mean, I maybe should do my research on this, but what we've seen in previous episodes is that there was a lot of this like government funding linked with private funding and these like grants for for tech in Canada, which has been kind of the basis of all of the all of the projects. Yeah, it's a little bit confusing where these pots of money came from, but it was mostly state funded. But yeah, so basically a year later the computers were dispersed across many schools and newer generations of the icon were still developing and evolving with kind of like more and more PC parts. So they were produced and deployed to schools until the nineties, but even by then they were almost entirely like PCs as they were running DOS and Windows programs and it's like morphed into pieces. Yeah, like off brand base space. Yeah. But you know, the kids had fun with it. Although again, most schools really just used it in programing classes and so a lot of kids found it to be useless knowledge then outside the classroom. So it was the goal to have it be just programing or was the goal to have it be like across the curriculum? It was supposed to be across the curriculum, so there were quite a few educational games on it, almost like 15, and most of them like games called the Bartlett Saga, Cross Country, Canada and Northwest. For a trader, lot of these focused focused on Canada's like national history and industry and trade. I love it I love the Northwest the tree but yeah, it was like about Canada's economy and like trade and all the different like national industries that were really important to the country. So very much like rooted in the history and, and yeah, I'm, I'm like making fun of it. But I distinctly remember a game I think about it a little bit and I have no idea what it was, but it was like an Australian game that I remember. There was like a map of Australia and there were different like areas that you could click and there were like things the one that I remember was that they had something about where people make like solar powered robot cars and then try to like race them across the desert. Wow. Like Australian data factory. MACINTOSH Yeah, no, I mean, like these were gains that had to be very specifically incorporated into classrooms that traditionally would never use computers like history, maths, geography, right? So like, you kind of had to you had to be quite inventive about like how you could make this happen. And so you would come out with hilarious names like Cross Country, Canada. But again, the actual use that kids got out of them compared to normal teaching was negligible. So, you know, kids being kids, there was quite a lot of messing around on them. I guess like them messing around on computers is an important part of computer literacy, like literacy having it in your life and like integrated that you can just go in and like mess around and play with. It is how it gets into your brain. Yeah, absolutely. There's some really funny anecdotes by commenters on old computers WSJ.com, which is a great website, by the way. You should check it out. Amazing. I want that You can you can actually like navigate the website with with your keyboard. It's fabulous by one of the one of the commentators writes something really funny and the actual like pranks that they did with these computers was amazing. Like the hacks that they thought up were just great. So yeah, I'll I'll just read out one of this comment. I don't really remember playing any games on them. I do remember making a sport of spinning the track ball forcefully enough to get it to jump out of its socket and flying across the room like that and shoulder surfing. Shoulder surfing. Is that like looking over someone's shoulder? Yeah, I think so, yeah. That and shoulder surfing. The teachers super user passwords so we could create our own super user accounts on it. There was a cool little animation program on it too, that you could draw sort of frame by frame line graphics, which would inevitably use to make dirty animations and add them to students log in files so that they logged in the teacher would give them crap. Oh my God, that and adding log out to other students, start log scripts so that when they logged in they'd get logged right out. Again, that's programing. That's programing. Yeah. This is by user management from 2005. So the show is I think I'm still not over that. I it is such a thing like when there was just like limited privacy on computers because there was like one and so you'd just be using it. And like particularly in classrooms where people would stand around and like it would be a group of kids playing So I saw this in my, I did a project about com in San Diego and this idea of like that, it's a you know, it's an educational computer program, but the actual experience of using the early common San Diego games for like for the kids use like the memories of it, a lot of that is a social thing. It's a one person game. But it would be a case where like one person would be sitting at the computer in the classroom. There'd be like six kids around and you know, you could swap. Yeah, yeah. Or like looking over each other show like the at the person's shoulder and suggesting things. And so that like it, even though if something is designed as a sort of single player game on a computer in reality in this era it was, it was a social activity. Yeah Yeah. And also the social dynamics of it must have been so important because you would have to, you know, give turns to your friends and it would be like this, this learning how to share, right. Like learning how to share entertainment, how to share space, how to be polite, how to have fun. But yeah, it's quite fun to hear how like this system just had like hardly any cybersecurity didn't have it in the fact that there's no like the fact that you could just like go into different students dot login given the way that they did that was by spying. Yeah like not even text file. Just like. Yeah. Life spying. Yeah. But getting a super user account. Some amazing so much power. Yeah. So other than that, kind of like mucking about in classrooms, um, the project got a lot of criticism institutionally as well for being like too top down heavy. So like just using too much money from the state for something that teachers were quite unsatisfied with. I guess it's hard to quantify the value of like mucking around even like, you know, we can say that, but that's important. But how do you like put that down on paper? Yeah, exactly. The moment. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure teachers found it like, funny and kind of cool, but also annoying because they would just want to get, you know, get going with the lesson. But yeah, and then the fact that it was, it was to resolve equality between schools was still very ostentatious because schools still had to purchase the machines themselves. So obviously some couldn't afford it, which was the biggest caveat. How do you think that that was going to work if the whole concept, like you talked about at the start, about how they were like, Oh, there's like some rich schools that can afford computers and some that can't. And I guess computers are cheaper, but only back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a it was a big problem. I think the government somehow throughout that time decided that they needed to get that money back somehow. And so charging for the product. Um, yeah, well that's the downfall. But that's the downfall. Yeah, but yeah, it was like it was a big part of this like national debate where obviously taxpayers money went into making this thing and then taxpayers had to buy it. Yeah, I don't know. I was having a conversation about this with my boyfriend today and he was like, Well, it's it's always like quite it's always quite like a poisonous conversation to have when you start to define yourself as like a tax payer because like, you know, paying tax is like this thing that you do. And it should always kind of be seen as like a little bit vague because you don't truly really know where your money is going to. But that's kind of like the whole point. It's like for the government to make that decision, right? Because you're not you're not a client, you're not a customer, you're a taxpayer. And I think when people start to see themselves as with this kind of like entitlement, things start to go a little bit south. But obviously, like, this was a big issue. Like there was quite a lot of money that was went into it, especially especially in like quite a debated space like schools where the money could have been used for so many other things and it could have been there to like improve so much more than just like put a, you know, silly computer into into classrooms where that became actually more of a distraction than something that could be learned from. And so alongside this, you know, another problem was the fact that it deployed a far worse design than promise. The teachers were told that they would be able to make their own lesson where using hypertext is less than where a actual term. Did you make it up? No, it's it's a thing. It's a great name. I like it's a great name. There's also the word courseware, which was also a similar to lesson where BSA, this was part of the pitch of the icon, like a really, really big selling point as well like to to get this actually financed and brought into production was the fact that it would have than wear on it and it would use hypertext which is very exciting and interesting. But yeah, they had this idea to use like similar techniques to the then future, you know, World Wide Web. But based on Napes Graphics rather than HTML. And it would also use like embedded bitmaps to generate information and and apps as a graphics language for use originally with video, text and teletext services. So this is how they envisioned hypertext. Basically like pages could link to other pages or run programs with C. So yeah, this was very cool and very independent lesson creation idea, which was then rejected by the ministry because they would like control over all courseware. So they were like, We want to give everyone the free to. And then this is it happened like, Oh no, yeah. So they were pitched this idea and they were like, This sounds amazing. And then throughout the development of it, they were like, No, we need to scrap this because actually it, it is this is like a disadvantage to government, I guess curriculum, the like the teachers that would have been most for having computers in the classrooms would probably be the ones that would be most excited about being able to create their own stuff. And so by doing this they really Yeah, yeah. And I think this is the way the core group of supporters. Exactly. Exactly. So this is I think really when like the shift, the mindset shift changed from the public to like hating on the icon a little bit more because this like very central part of the excitement about the icon was taken away. You know, the fact that it gained, it gave people more control, more individual control about the stuff that they were wanting to create for the kids. And this mindset really like foreshadows the fact that authorities and institutions were kind of afraid of the idea of hypertext and its power for independent and decentralized navigation and creation and learning. I suppose if they're going to all the effort to make their own computer, it's so that they have control over the ways the people are learning. And and maybe this sounded like a good idea. And then they realized that it kind of went against what they were. Yeah, give the people control but not too much control. Yeah. So, you know, like what the actual like the general vibe is looking back at the icon, do people look back and think, Oh, that was a mock up. Like we, that was like not a good thing. I think people looking back and oh, that was so cool. I think it was a little bit more like a silly project. Um, I mean, only judging from the comments on old computers dot com. I mean, really, I haven't really seen many of them going by now. Now I'm going to live my life advice from Okay, yeah, I but again, it's like it's so hard to like you said, it's so hard to quantify these things because compared to the technology that we have now, like, yeah, it was very silly and rudimentary, but it was also great at the time, but you can't really remember these things. You can't really remember how like in awe and amaze you were biotechnology when you were like eight. You know, you're just like, Oh, whatever. I'll just like, mess around on this. I'd like take the trackball out and start throwing it up like. And I guess think about the ingenuity that came into it, you know, all the engineering that came into it. You don't really think about that and you're learning so many new things at school. Yeah. That adding in a computer is just another new thing. Yeah. Which is why I like to do it at that age. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, as you know, as the icon wasn't able to keep up with the computer industry's competition as it basically at this point just rendered to be a slightly worse P.C. and it's because, you know, less than where it was taken out and that was like like the core central part of its selling point was taken out and its technology became more and more obsolete. In 1994, the ministry canceled the development of the icon and is now just an object in the ministry's archive. And the reason it hadn't survived competition with their real PC counterparts. In my opinion, you know, other than the fact that it wasn't provided to schools for free really is because it had scrapped the hypertext idea. So this future where all teachers could create lessons and curriculums freely and share pages and resources amongst themselves and constantly like cross-reference topics and subjects was extremely kind of like confusing and scary for the government and the multidisciplinary prospect. An entire point really of the icon was tossed out and therefore made itself obsolete. It's very interesting to think about the fact that this sort of hypertext idea and, you know, shout out to Nelson but, you know, like wanting to create things like lessons and curriculums and sharing things and all that, that that is what the teachers were really wanting in meeting. And I don't know if they ever got that. Yeah. Well, I think from anything they would have definitely been wanting a needing that if it would have also just been thought out with, with the teachers in mind. So by not creating more work for them, by making it very easy to create this stuff, because I think even if they would have allowed the implementation of lesson where they really would have really needed make the kind of like application quite strong and easy to use and very intuitive. So a lot of like design work and engineering work would have been necessary for that. So maybe it was also like the case of the government not really wanting to put that much effort into creating a developing hypertext because it would have. Yeah, like I said, it would have needed like quite a lot of computation to make it possible and to make it successful for teachers. Right. Because you don't want teachers like coding constantly to, to make a presentation or whatever. Yeah. Like some, some are into it but. Right. Get everyone to. Yeah. You don't need to like No you shouldn't be able to No. See to become a teacher but I don't know maybe maybe you would have worked, maybe it would have been very easy. Maybe would have maybe like learning how to use C would have been easier than learning how to, like, you know, make an Excel spreadsheet. So who knows? You can look at it and sort of think, Well, it's probably good that they got rid of it because the hypertext stuff, because that's not the way that things that ended up that, you know, like that's not that wouldn't have been a skill that would have been super transferable into like w w w Internet. But maybe if this had happened, then hypertext would have taken off more and what we would have gotten than the end would have been something closer to the idea of hypertext. Yeah, I think also what really excites me is the fact that hypertext could have enabled the idea of cross-referencing subject. So yeah, now we just our curriculums are just based on these buckets of like information types, you know, geography, history, science, maths, art. It's just that like a whole other end of the spectrum, but like if those things would have been dovetailed a little bit more like who knows how much more thinking could have been involved, how much more inventions could have happened if we could have like linked some of those topics together. And now we're really heading towards sort of more of a focus on interdisciplinary right. But it's decades later. Yeah, right now we have to go to like university to like, be able to study that stuff. What does it look like? So cute. It's very cu it's very cute. The trackball have charisma. It's definitely got charisma. Um, let me, uh, try and describe. Uh. Oh, it's so cute. Yeah, it's just like a square computer. It's all joined up. So the keyboards joined up with the with the screen. It does not have a mouse, you guys. It's got a trackball on the keyboard. I didn't realize that's what, that's what you've had. Yeah. Wow. So it's very impressive. Like the design of it is really great and it sort of it leans upwards. So the computer is so the keyboard is like at an angle and then the screen is actually quite high up, which again, I think ergonomically speaking would be great to have on your desk because you're not hunched over like you are with the laptop these days. Like it's literally like propped up quite high sequences, straight, straight up. So these were just designed very well. I think the hardware is really fun. And again, it's all in color, like it uses 16 bit color graphics. Um, yeah, I love it. Me too. It is really interesting how it has like it's almost like it has its own little desk. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. It has the keyboard and the track check of the trackball. Um yeah. It's I know you're right. It's like a quintessential desktop computer. Great. Thank you so much for telling us all about this computer. Thank you. I love talking about it. You get the ones that they'd like because this one's cute. And then the One Laptop per child. Mm mm. Yeah. Was also very cute. Are cute. Yeah. Thank you so much for telling us this story. I am excited that we're developing our Canadian tech history Knowledge episode episode. I mean, I also want to say, like, hopefully we can kind of expand on how hypertext would have really changed things. Not just for the tech industries, but also for like other industries. So luckily we are working on that. That's a big topic. Um, we've got a couple more for education on computers. Thanks for listening everybody. I hope you do some fun tech history. Thanks. This week. Yeah. And we'll we'll be we'll be back with you shortly. I'm going to watch the BlackBerry biopic. I'm also going to watch I want to watch the Nam June Paik. Yeah. Documentary as well. That's still on my list. I thought the really good recommendation, I was thinking maybe they're going to say that Air Jordan film. Oh, yeah. It's a I think it you know, it's not tech that it's definitely the same era and it has, I'm sure, exactly the same narrative. The same lesson. Yeah. Cool. Cool. All right. Well, fill us in on that one next time. Yeah, Maybe I shall.