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US invented the internet, we get that little bonus. It's like a unique wonder in Civ 5. This country gets the bonuses, end of story. If your country colonizes the moon or something, you get those benefits.

The inventor of the television: http://www.televisionheaven.co... http://www.televisionheaven.co... The world’s first programmable electronic computer Tommy Flowers, Flowers was born at 160 Abbot Road, Poplar in London’s East End on 22 December 1905, the son of a bricklayer. Thomas “Tommy” Harold Flowers, MBE (22 December 1905 – 28 October 1998) was a British engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

US invented the internet, we get that little bonus. It's like a unique wonder in Civ 5. This country gets the bonuses, end of story. If your country colonizes the moon or something, you get those benefits.

The inventor of the television: http://www.televisionheaven.co... http://www.televisionheaven.co... The world’s first programmable electronic computer Tommy Flowers, Flowers was born at 160 Abbot Road, Poplar in London’s East End on 22 December 1905, the son of a bricklayer. Thomas “Tommy” Harold Flowers, MBE (22 December 1905 – 28 October 1998) was a British engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Have you never seen an episode of Time Tunnel?

http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/timetunnel.htm

But the era of "consciously" recording something is (nearly) dead. A few years ago you might find something out and "store" that bit of information so that it was available next time you needed it (say - a recipe for Christmas Pudding). Storage was expensive in terms of time or effort, so it didn't happen to everything. These days storage is not only cheap, it's often automatic. If I want to know what I was working on a year last Thursday it's easy to find out - I think that I last saw a paper diary about 10 years ago, so a year last Thursday is as accessible last week in terms of what was written down at the time.

In thirty years time, we won't be struggling to find out what a particular band sounded like in 2010 by trying to restore rotting CDs or breaking some long-forgotten DRM system - there'll be a thousand and one personal records of every performance still flying around as "live" data, taken using people's mobile phones (or whatever has replaced mobile phones in 2010).

The way that we know what a lot of (British) TV programs in the 1960s and even later isn't because they were "officially preserved" at the time - unofficial audience recordings and tapes "rescued" from bins have had a huge role to play (see http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/missing.htm for a few examples). The future's just like that, only more so.

Furthermore, the phrase "TARDIS for children" is at best redundant, since Doctor Who was actually a kids' show.

It wasn't just a kids' show. It was made by BBC Drama, not the children's department, and although it was intended to be educational, it wasn't aimed only at children. Sidney Newman had pitched the idea (time travel teaching science and history) in North America - to the CBC I believe, and possibly in the States too. He later became head of BBC Drama and got his chance to make it happen.

As you say, it didn't stay educational for long. Though The Daleks was at least inspired by Nazism and the dangers of the neutron bomb, and the Cybermen were intended to be extrapolated from contemporary science.

Here in Australia they stick watermarks on every program now. Even funnier - if you're watching widescreen you can see the regular 4:3 station logo, then another one to the right of it, then another watermark with an HDTV logo. Then they stick flashing banners across the bottom telling you about this really great program coming up.

You know, watching a decent movie on free to air in this country it's like viewing the Mona Lisa on a web site. I don't bother any more, I just pick up boxed sets of old UK TV shows off ebay. Faves so far - 7 years of Minder and 54 episodes of The Professionals

Here in Australia they stick watermarks on every program now. Even funnier - if you're watching widescreen you can see the regular 4:3 station logo, then another one to the right of it, then another watermark with an HDTV logo. Then they stick flashing banners across the bottom telling you about this really great program coming up.

You know, watching a decent movie on free to air in this country it's like viewing the Mona Lisa on a web site. I don't bother any more, I just pick up boxed sets of old UK TV shows off ebay. Faves so far - 7 years of Minder and 54 episodes of The Professionals