Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

I'm your host, Andrew Heaton, man about town, man's man, ladies man, man of the future.

If you could go back in time to say 1990 and give advice about the forthcoming Internet revolution,

what would you tell them? What advice would you give?

In 1990, it was not at all clear that the internet was going to be a

thing. If you watch films from the 1980s, occasionally our heroes would need to do something

involving a computer, and they would enlist the help of a dweeb in the library because the term

nerd was still pejorative,

and computers were a kind of magical box only thick spectacled versions could unlock.

In 1977, and there is less time between then and 1990 versus now in 1990, the tech entrepreneur Ken Olson wrote,

There's no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.

Here's a news report from 1984, the year of my birth, on something interesting called

Electronic Mail.

With the assistance of the outside broadcast unit, we will be linking from the database

studio to their home.

Pat Green and Julian, welcome to database.

Hello Jane.

Hello Jane.

Now Julian, I see you have your computer linked to the telephone line.

Can you tell us how you did that?

Yes, well it's very simple really.

The telephone is connected to the telephone network with the British Telecom plug.

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