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Missed this early this month while I was on vacation: Computer Show is back with a new episode, partnering with HP to showcase one of their fast color printers. Yes it’s an ad, but yes it’s still funny.
From Adam Lisagor’s Sandwich Video comes Computer Show, a present-day send-up of a personal computing show set in 1983. The guests and their products are contemporary and real, but the hosts are stuck in 1983 and don’t really know what the web is, what Reddit is, what links are, or anything like that.
“Computer Show” is a technology talk show, set in 1983. The dawn of the personal computing revolution. Awkward hair and awkward suits. Primitive synths and crude graphics. VHS tapes. No Internet. But there’s a twist.
The guests on this show are tech luminaries — experts, founders, thinkers, entrepreneurs…from 2015. They are real, and they are really on “Computer Show” to talk about their thing. Will it go well? Can they break through to the host Gary Fabert (played by Rob Baedeker of the SF-based sketch mainstay Kasper Hauser) and his rotating cast of co-hosts, who know of neither iPhone nor website nor Twitter nor…hardly anything?
The first episode, featuring Lumi, is embedded above and here’s the second episode with Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian.
Hopefully they’ll get to make more.
Update: In an interview with Inc., Lisagor shares how Computer Show came about.
So it just became clear to Roxana and Tony, there was something here. Roxana had the idea to make something in this universe. To produce a show like “The Computer Chronicles”.
One day, over Slack, Roxana asked me for the contact info of a producer I know. When I asked why, she told me she had this idea, and also asked if I’d maybe be a contributor on it. When I got more info out of her (she tends to be a little private about her personal projects) and explained to me that she had this idea of a tech talk show set in the early 80’s, where the guests would interview people from modern day, I just about flipped out and lost my mind I was so excited.
Update: While we not-so-patiently await new episodes of Computer Show, at least we can buy the t-shirt.
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