The BBC Microcomputer has long been represented as an educational computer that changed the landscape of information technology in British schools during the 1980s. Its story of innovation is characterized as one of a small Cambridge spin-off that joined up with the BBC and government departments to create a new culture of educational computing in Britain.

This paper suggests that an STS analysis, that brings together artefacts, organisations, users and mediators, not only illuminates the culture of programming that supported the co-construction of multiple user/producer identities, but also enables scholars to move beyond an understanding of producers with a purely economic imperative to those with cultural values and a public service agenda. Like many other personal computers, the BBC Microcomputer reflected a desire to instil its users with an intellectual curiosity and a sense of creative entrepreneurialism. The involvement of a state broadcaster in its production makes these values explicit in the way the artefact was co-produced and consumed in homes and schools.

This perspective is particularly relevant in the current climate, with government and industry calls to inspire a new generation of programmers. 25 years on the BBC Microcomputer has a long life history – with dedicated users that keep alive the hardware and software. There are even hopes for an afterlife through the Raspberry Pi, that captures these Reithian values in new hardware with a fresh generation of programmers. But does this type of technological innovation require a sense of public service at its heart?