1979: Will WORD PROCESSORS start a HOME WORKING revolution? | Past Predictions | BBC Archive

It’s interesting that it wasn’t word processors that empowered the working from home revolution but a pandemic.

The predictions just keep coming...

What's crazy is that today, you literally can "tell the computer to change it" 😃

Word Processing was like a "major" to me when I attended Control Data Institute in 1988. Then Microsoft Word became my mainspring. Microsoft Access is my favorite application program. All thanks to my typewriting background that was raised to my keyboarding skill. Still, I keyboard by using 9 fingers and my head aimed above the keyboard. I hope that word processing will return in full force, as it was before. Today, I do not really need the keyboarding speed that won for me on the job long ago, but I may type slow but it would be fast without even trying!🙂

and all this time I thought word processor was just the name of a software program you can find on windows

it'll never catch on lol

its absolutely insane how much they got right here

We'll be unstoppable once we get our hands on this technology!

Well Thank Goodness that "microwriter" was an evolutionary dead-end and got extinct... 🙂

And I can still remember those large-size ploppy-disks (with their 360k storage) - used them back on the early '90's, with my XT, DOS and Einstein Writer.

Man, this didn’t age well.

I hope that this invention will come soon to our homes.

That's a micro computer ? Damn son we are indeed in the future

Homes. Will fiat paper currency massive devaluation and low wages make them unobtainable ? and lead to political revolution ?

1979: This is the future

Writers: I dont think so!

Minitel - is what the French had access to!

WTF, WFH in 1979! I remember that 4 button keyboard back in the day, never took off of course - surely a qwerty keyboard is easier to learn? Things have moved on in the 'army of women typists' sense, thank god! I find it really quaint that the presenter worries that we may all need to learn to type. Ive been thinking about what he really meant by that, but back then noone had a 'word processor' and therefore no keyboard, so noone EVER typed unless a 'female' member of the family learned to touch type as a qualification for a job.

working from home ? well just so long as I can wear my dressing gown 23 hours out of the day whilst flicking myself off watching Netflix coupled with my essential 2-hour toilet breaks then sure... I'm working from home now actually... hang on... I've got a log-on coming on... hmmmpf... wait for it wait for it.... Hello Sir how can I help ? No your through to customer service... the plopping sound sir is your phone, do you have a hearing aid sir ? lovely... hmmmmmmmmmpffff....pfff... pfff... pfff... ploink!

microwriting can get fvcked!

Extraordinary when technology even then was advanced to that extent how very limited the vision of the period's entrepreneurs.

I want that micro writer!!!

The MicroWriter was still trying to gain popularity when I did my Computer Studies diploma in 1988. I'm glad I learned to type instead.

This video is absolute nonsense , computers belong in the hands of the few.

If we allow the general public to get hold of computing power I predict it will be the end of society as we know it.

It won't just be word processors, it'll be handheld communication devices which citizens of the future will be glued to small display screens which will display any information they need.

People simply won't talk to each other anymore, while it will allow big tech will be able to manipulate them with, I guess things that could be called media platforms.

This frightening future must be stopped, I fear for the 21st century citizens.

I just told my PC to write 100,000 word book about lobsters, and it did it. Eat my shorts, 1979!

My first wordproccessor had a daisy wheel in it. If you wanted to change the font, you changed the daisy wheel.

All those Wangs just sitting around the office. (Sorry.)

It's rather odd that from about 1980 onward predictions of the future seem to have got a lot more accurate than they were before. Watch an equivalent gee-golly-whizz film about new tech from the 1960s or earlier and the predictions get pretty wild. The only exception to that was Arthur C Clarke whose 1960s predictions about the effects of satellite tech and comms were amazingly prescient - whereas contemporary predictions then were all about personal jet cars and owning a second house on Mars!

Ah yes, bubble memory and British computer breakthroughs...the good old days!

Increíble, hoy en día todos tenemos Word

The final bit about totalitarianism and decentralisation is incredibly prescient.

No appreciation or care given whatsoever regarding the impact of less people being required to do the work. All about efficiency and profit for the few as ever.

No!! That took a pandemic.

I love this series! Some things we got hilariously wrong - and then came Twitter!!
John, Ontario, Canada

It took 40 years and a pandemic, but yes! Word processing helped!

Word Processing sounds useful. Try it, you'll be surprised by what you see and read. This technology requires a particular material - silli con. Running your ultra pc and smart phone, as well as your smart car and yet we're dumb and dumber like never before.

I was a NEET back in 1983 a few years after this film and joined a YTS scheme. I thought computers might be the future. I knew nothing about them and the YTS scheme was a load of crap. I spent most of my time being a dogsbody and getting lunches for teletype engineers. I wasn’t taught anything and mainly left to my own devices for £25pw. However, I taught myself to program using Olivetti PCOS/BASIC. I had a knack for it that I never knew and found it relatively easy. Roll on today and I have a successful career as a software engineer/architect. Computers changed my life forever and this still holds true today.
If you have a knack for computing and enjoy it, then do it, it will change your life.

This 'world wide information society' sounds interesting.

Luke Casey died in November 2022. A good broadcaster and journalist.

In a few years from this, I'm going to own my first computer: a Sinclair ZX81. That alone is an amazing revolution - an 11-year old with a home computer! Unthinkable not many years before.

The presenter is Luke Casey, who only died in November 2022 at 80. Originally from Ireland he came to the UK at 14. Here, he is a mere 37-years old!

Word ... Processor?? Oh, it sounds all too foreign and futuristic I don't think I'll be able to remember that. 😄

Now that the pandemic is over, boomer management is eager to reverse the remote work trend again. Some of the most eager ones spent the last few decades stagnant and failing to update their skill set with the times, they know they're replaceable and desperate to look like they're central to the company.

I’ve wanted to be a computer programmer working from home since 2003!

"work from home" 🤣
2022 and we are still struggling to realise it.