Micro Live - Series 3

The home computer industry has recently seen important changes of fortune for some of its major players, including Sir Clive Sinclair, Alan Sugar of Amstrad, and Bryan Long of Acorn. Their views, plus a look at the latest hardware and software, make up an assessment of changes since the last episode of Micro Live. Also a review of do-it-yourself computer animation software and then, hotfooting it from this year's Computer Animation Film Festival ceremony, Lesley Judd reviews the best of this year's mainframe masterpieces. (1986)

In the last, extended edition of the series, Micro Live visits the Haymarket Theatre where the world of Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, is portrayed by Derek Jacobi in the stageplay Breaking the Code. Turing's computers in the 1940s and 1950s were 'first-generation' machines; now computer scientists are working on the 'fifth generation'. In Scotland the institute named after Turing has a world reputation in artificial intelligence work, but its software products are hardly used in the UK. In California, where seemingly limitless sums are thrown at research projects, 'Chinese temples', 'brainstorming' and robots for war veterans are the subjects of fifth generation work. Dr Ian Page of Oxford University puts such present and future work in perspective. (1987)