Comedy of the Week - Aurie Styla: Tech Talk

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Stand-up comedian Aurie Styla, a 90s nerd, takes an autobiographical journey through technology history.We begin in the early 90s, with the tinny sound of the Nintendo Game Boy and his first 13-inch television which only worked if asked very nicely, and he re-wired to show all the channels available - in total, four.A technology lover since those days of that 13-inch TV and his first console, the Sega Master System – featuring ‘Alex Kidd In Miracle World’, the most frustrating video game of all time – Aurie has seen technology transform in a manner that would have been hard to believe in the 90s.This show charts his personal relationship with machines, looking at the past (computer games that you had to load from cassette tapes), the present (houses that are lit and warmed via apps on your phone, cars that drive themselves without you) and the future (AIs that tell you how to dress and what to eat for dinner, and superior intelligences that command your every move whether you want to object or not).Technology has moved on rapidly, from being a fun sideshow to the bedrock of our understanding of human life. Aurie guides us through this landscape with infectious wit, taking time to remember the awkward interface of MSN Messenger while also negotiating the modern culture of having to check with a virtual assistant before you turn your lights off. A warm, human show about the way the world has become less and less warm and human, celebrating the march of tech while being appropriately terrified of it.An Impatient production for BBC Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. I wanted a younger brother when I was nearly five years old. Someone to talk to, to play with around the house, so I wouldn't be the only child. And I brought it to my mum, you know, sad face, you know, really trying to ham it up so I can play to her emotions. And I remember my mum crouched down to me and looked me in the eye and said,

have you measured the size of your head? I ain't pushing another one of them out, man. No way, we'll figure it out. And that's the story of how I got my first TV in my bedroom. Boom! LAUGHTER Take two. APPLAUSE I'm going to be a techie. I'm going to be a techie.

Welcome, I'm Maurice Styler and I am what you would call a techie or tech nerd. Now it was typically not called where and when I grew up to be one, but now it's all the craze to claim. There's even new terms for it. Like for example, if you're black and a nerd, they like to say you're a blurred. It's a real thing. They tried black and geek, but bleak doesn't sound too... They even tried black and techie, but that one sounds worse.

Especially with a South African accent. But how does a young kid from an estate block in Neesden become a tech lover? Well, it all starts in 1992, Neesden, in Northwest London, Ainsworth, close to the state. Upstairs in my room, with a table in the corner, and on it, every child's dream. A big screen TV, 13 inches. It looked more like a CCTV, you know?

As wide as it was deep, ready to watch all the channels available. Four. Not 4K. Four. Just four channels, yeah? And you couldn't just turn it on and go. You wish. You had to tune in and program the stations yourself. You had to open up the settings flap and tweak the cogs and tune in the frequency, find a sweet spot,

lightly kiss it on the forehead, say I love you into the speaker, buy some roses and chocolates whilst playing some Luther Vandross, yeah? I didn't know you had to become Alan Turing and crack the Enigma code to catch an episode of EastEnders. And even then, Ian Bill's face would still be a bit fuzzy. But we did it. I remember mastering this as a child and being the unofficial home engineer. and even then, Ian Bill's face would still be a bit fuzzy. But we did it.

I remember mastering this as a child and being the unofficial home engineer. I had a tool bag with a screwdriver in my blue pajamas. I looked like Fix It Felix Jr. from Wreck It Ralph. I programmed the TV stations, the radio stations. I even took apart my VCR and put it back together again just to see how it would work. It's a good thing I like technology and not physiology,

or else I'd have been given a mad scientist vibe. And speaking of way back, I kind of want to play a game with you guys. Is there anyone here under the age of 25? Got one there, anyone else? Okay, I'll tell you what. I'm going to play some sounds for you, and you have to guess what the sounds are

and where they come from. All right, we'll go with sound effect number one. Any ideas what this could be? She just said VCR, that's right, make some noise for her. I blatantly know what her mum told her, she doesn't even know what VCR stands for. You still have one next one Not smoke alarm one old man yes, he said pager What's a pager you don't know what is my gal yeah

All right, here's the number one, number three. It sounds like the room knows it already. So on the count of three, just tell me what it is. One, two, three. Yeah, a dial-up modem. You know what a dial-up modem is? No. Okay, it's what you use to get onto the internet, but before like broadband and that, it was slow.

It is, you might be on the internet searching for, who's your favourite music artist right now? Drake. So you're there looking at Drake and seeing where he might be touring and so forth, and then all of a sudden, the house phone would ring. There'd be no more looking at Drake, I promise you. where he might be touring and so forth, and then all of a sudden, the house phone would ring. LAUGHTER There'd be no more looking at Drake, I promise you.

It couldn't do one or the other. It was either the internet or your sister chatting to her friends. All right, sound effect number four. RATTLING Ooh, hold on. We've got someone here who I think she knows it. It's a payphone. It is a payphone. You put a coin in and it sounds just knows it. It's a payphone. It is a payphone. You put a coin in and it sounds just like that. It's a payphone, yeah.

Ever use a payphone? No, would never need to, trust me. When I was a child, our actual phone was a payphone down the road. We didn't have no landline at all. Do you hear this? Her landline was the street's landline. Everybody's phone was that phone.

You're getting the call. One second, I've got to run down the street to go and answer it. The other time. That is crazy. All right, here's another one. Ooh, some young man just over there. Receiving a message. Oh, it's actually not receiving a message.

Anyone else? What is it? Sonic the Hedgehog. It is not. Okay. Move on very quickly. Total opposite. Oh, we got one there.

Hold on. Game Boy. Thank you very much. It's the noise when the Nintendo logo came down on the Game Boy, it would hit and it would go... Oh, this is fun. I thought people were going to get it quick. You lot don't know. Nuttin'. I like it. The Nintendo logo came down on the Game Boy, it would hit and it would go. This is fun. I thought people were gonna get it quick.

You lot don't know nothing. I like it. Give yourselves a round of applause, guys. All right. I got into gaming around five years old because my mum, who was also computer savvy, saw that the world was going in this direction. So she jumped on it, thankfully.

My first video games console was the Sega Master System. Couple references there, yeah, yeah. And my first game, Alex Kidd in Miracle World. And the reason why it was my first game is because it was built in the machine. My mama buying anything else. It already come preloaded. Yeah son, you can have that one, there you go. Sounds good, though, right?

It wasn't. The game was terrible. The music would give you hope, but every time you died, the music used to taunt and haunt you, right? His mission, Alex Kidd, was to save the miracle world with weapons and tools. He was fast. He could fight, would slay dragons, ride motorbikes, shoot fireballs.

But the thing that always used to kill him is literally every time he would lose a game of rock, paper, scissors. That would be it. It was a really weird game. My mum and her friends were smart. They made like a children's gift pack. Each one of them bought a different console.

So anytime we went to each other's house, we got to play them all. Smart, innit? My mum drew the Sega straw. My godmother drew the Nintendo straw. My cousin drew the Atari straw. So no one went to his house. No, no, let's be honest.

Atari, come on. At them times you had Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog or Bentley Bear. Who you going for? Over the years, the games we played were iconic. Streets of Rage, Street Fighter, Street Racer. Basically anything just to keep us off the streets. And even then, we had the chance to be social

and not segregated. Two players side by side, the good old days. Fighting games were my thing. Love me some Mortal Kombat, you know? Oh, the sound effects as well. Hey, now they were epic. You pick your player, all you would hear was, Liu Kang.

Scorpion. The bass would get you amped up. Then you would hear, round one. Fight. Fighting going off, like pow, pow. Wah! Across the screen, and so on. Get over here, and you know what I mean?

Oh man, it would amp you up man. And then you do an uppercut, toasty. All of that would happen on the screen as well. You start to ruck up a man every now and then and all of a sudden, once you get to the end of the round you hear, finishing. When someone would press some buttons and now I'd get punched in the face, my head would

fly off my shoulders, my body would still be standing there with all this fake blood coming out pixelated all on the screen and then all you hear is fatality. Really really appropriate for an eight year old. You know what I mean? Then PlayStation which changed the landscape. See these? What? Epic. no more of them cartridges we have to try and get the game working blow the dust out and stuff

it was crazy when we had to do that games now could save our progress or like them little memory cards that they had and the picture quality back then we would swear that it was the most realistic gameplay could ever get. My father was a DJ as well and had a whole room full of equipment dedicated to sound, turntables, cassette players, amps, speakers, knobs, levers, dials, meters. The man looked like one of them guys who was trying to contact life in the Milky Way from his garage, you know what I mean? He always used to ask me if I wanted to make a mixtape, which is literally a compilation of songs recorded on a tape.

Oh man, it was surgical how we had to make the mixtape, you know? You connect the CD player to a tape recorder, play a song off the CD or the radio, then hit the record and play together to record on a cassette tape. Once the song was recorded, hit stop and boom, track one is done. And then you have to repeat it because you're making a whole tape full of loads of songs.

It sounds easy, it wasn't. When your song's playing on radio and you got to the end of the tape, right? So you had to somehow... So you had to somehow... LAUGHTER Quickly eject it, pick it up, flip it round... LAUGHTER ..and then press it again, so it would do it back in reverse again. APPLAUSE

Remember the times, man. The last bit of fundamental technology in my life started when I went to boarding school at 11 years old. People here at boarding school are like, wow, what was that like? Jail. My mom got me a mobile phone, the Ericsson A10AE. Like brick phone. Some remember this.

This one had a briefcase or something. This was my first mobile phone. The screen was so small, you could only read text messages one line at a time One line at a time. Imagine flirting now with your partner via messages One line at a time a couple of characters each time. Hey, I can't wait to cuddle with you When I get home tonight, you gotta send them in broken parts What time are you gonna get home

7pm. Oop. Make sure you pick up some chocolate from the supermarket. Mark it and get some whipped cream. I wanna use it on my open

bracket, full stop, close bracket space, open bracket, full stop, close bracket, space, open bracket, full stop, close bracket. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Tits. LAUGHTER Cost nearly £25 just to sext your partner back. LAUGHTER I shouldn't complain though. I made my first bit of hustle money with these old phones, you know.

Creating ringtones. Ah, mobile phones back then had the phones, you know? Creating ringtones. Oh yeah. Ah, mobile phones back then had the option to create your own custom ringtones by inputting the music keys and how fast they would play. Now I did music tech at school and that was my thing. So I was the guy where people would go to to customise their ringtones to match popular music for a couple of pounds. Little hustle there, isn't it?

Now because phones weren't allowed in school at the time, it felt a little shady doing it, like a drug deal of some sort. People would come up to me at school, hey listen, listen, bruv, hey, look. You got that gangster's paradise, bruv. No, I do, I do, but I got something even better, bruv. I got that hit me baby one more time, you know. Yeah, I got that, man, I got, I do two for fives,

two for fives. Nokia then came and of course mastered the game of having a cool phone, the 5110, the 3210, the 3310 and more, which introduced Snake. Everyone's starting point differs. Like my mum used to have a phone the size of a briefcase, which had a hand receiver attached to it. Nothing about that was mobile. You understand?

My dad still remembers booking holidays on teletext. You don't even know what teletext is. Meanwhile my niece doesn't even know what the millennium bug is. How we was afraid that computers were going to take over. We lose all of our money because Klotz couldn't handle going from $1,999 to $2,000. And I'll be honest, it didn't affect my family much because you have to have money to lose in the first place before anything could affect you that way. That brings us to the end of this first episode. But what happens next?

Join me on my next Tech Talk to find out. But for now, I got some more ringtones to make. Bye. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Ori Stylist Tech Talk was written and performed by Man Like Me! And it was an impatient production for BBC Radio 4. Thanks for listening to the Comedy of the Week podcast from BBC Radio 4. If you want more, check out the Friday Night Comedy podcast, featuring the News Quiz, The Now Show and Dead Ringers.

From BBC Radio 4, Scott Lidster, you've directed another terrible film, The Fifteenth, in as many years. When are you going to stop? No room. As soon as they told me that they were setting up a commission on race and ethnic disparities, I said, well, as long as Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim and Tim are on the team, you'll have everything sorted before the tea and biscuits arrive. No room. Jack wasn't familiar with my BAFTA award-winning style of walking around my guest's house before the interview starts and saying uncomfortably forced and awkward boring things. Michael Spicer, No Room. It's a sketch show with lots and lots and lots and lots of Michael Spicers. Listen on BBC Sounds.