Welcome to what promises to be a fantastic week of activities from the heart of Bloomsbury in London.
UCL digifest will be an eclectic mix of things. We have items on digital professionalism, content to get you thinking about privacy, a twitter chat moderated live from a red London bus and a heap of other activities to allow you, our online audience, to participate in the event remotely.
Creativity, sharing ideas and knowledge are at the heart of UCL digifest, so please join in with our daily activities and share generously. Activities will be released daily during digifest week. You will be able to access them from the Course menu item at the top.
Talking of activities to join in with, here’s one to get you in the mood for UCL digifest:
We would like to hear YOUR stories about the oldest gadgets you still have or still use. What old tech is sitting in your attic or cellar gathering dust? Even if you no longer have any really old gadgets at home, please send us your stories and any photos you have of your oldest computers, cameras, mobile phones. Share your memories of anything that beeped and lit up your life in days gone by.
We asked our colleagues to share their own stories, and here are just a few to get you inspired:
Peter talks about “Victor”:
Mira reminisces about her e-Reader:
Tim talks about his old home computer:
Abraham remembers his pager:
View even more tech nostalgia on our Old Gadgets YouTube playlist
We look forward to receiving your stories either in the comments below or via email at ucldigifestATgmailDOTcom. You can also tweet links @ucldigifest using the #-tag #dfOldTech
Just one more small request:
When you share your stories and media with us, please consider licensing your content with a CC-BY license. This will enable us to add your content to our big Friday showcase and online gallery.
UCL digifest 
November 6, 2014 at 09:14
I suppose everybody of my age recalls their first home computer. Mine was an Acorn Atom. I had already programmed on a DEC PDP8 – in assembler – and on a big ICL mainframe – in Fortran. I wrote little games on the Atom and hooked up a highly unreliable cassette tape recorder. It was more an intellectual exercise than of practical utility. I do recall a very strong sense of the unrealised potential of the technology but unfortunately no accompanying sense of how it would be realised. Still, I think it provided me with the additional impetus and inspiration to be a computer scientist and my experience in programming it still underpins my engagement with the subject.
November 6, 2014 at 15:24
Aaah the Datasette! I remember that. My first computer was a Commodore 16 passed down from my nerdy uncle when he upgraded to the 64. I taught myself the first bits of programming on there. Unfortunately, my parents weren’t too impressed with the music my sister and I composed on the thing! 😉
