Internet cafes and Doomsday seeds

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

We hear about Cyberia - the first commercial internet café which opened in London in 1994. Director of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, Professor Vicki Nash, talks us through other notable landmarks in the internet’s history. Plus how the Covid N95 mask was invented by a scientist from Taiwan in 1992.

Also how Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff was punished for his writing on liberation theology. Staying with Brazil, we hear how poor rural workers occupied land owned by the rich, resulting in violent clashes in 1980.

And the world's first global seed vault, buried deep inside a mountain on an Arctic island.

Contributors: Eva Pascoe – a founder of Cyberia internet café Prof Vicki Nash – Director of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford Peter Tsai – inventor of N95 mask Leonardo Boff – Brazilian theologian Maria Salete Campigotto – Landless Workers Movement protestor Dr Cary Fowler – founder of Doomsday seed vault

(Photo: People using Cyberia in 1994. Credit: Mathieu Polak/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Una Chaplin, and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles.
0:05.0	It tells the story of how my grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, and many others, were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood.
0:14.8	Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service.
0:19.8	Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
0:23.2	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson the past brought to life
0:34.6	by those who were there. This week the inventor of the material in face masks
0:40.0	that have saved millions of lives. I felt good not because I developed the technology
0:47.0	just because my technology
0:50.0	can help people against the earth.
0:53.0	Plus how liberation theology brought priests and peasants into conflict with the Catholic
0:58.8	Church and the Brazilian government and the man behind the doomsday seed bank.
1:04.0	They get a call saying why don't you send a duplicate copy of your seeds up to us near the North Pole?
1:09.0	And they would think well what have you been drinking or what drug are you on that's coming up
1:14.0	later in the podcast but before that we're looking back at a time before the
1:18.2	internet and computers were as ubiquitous as they are today this was the dark ages you might say the age of the typewriter and the landline.
1:27.2	Some back then though were able to see the light and among them was Eva Pasco who was one of the founders of the first commercial Internet
1:35.4	Café in 1994. For those few at the forefront of the revolution, it was a heady time.
1:42.2	Here's Jill Kursley.
1:43.0	Imagine what it would be like to be able to talk to any computer in the world including the one in the White House.
1:49.0	It seems unbelievable now, but this was a time where many people hadn't even heard of the internet or email, let alone used it.
1:57.5	And it was a time when computers, cakes and Kylie came together to play their part in the success of what's said to be the first internet cafe.
2:08.0	It was great to be part of connecting the world and also letting people connect with similar-minded people.
	...

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