WELCOME TO BOATS V BOTS!

Boats v Bots was created in 2026 by visual artist and educator Jacqui Harrison to illustrate her fears that our increasing dependence upon digital technology is not only doing huge damage to the environment but it is also hijacking the imaginations of our children by denying them the opportunity to learn how to think critically.

It was produced on a low cost Raspberry Pi 5 computer using the free online software Scratch. A Raspberry Pi is a tiny, single-board computer that was developed in the UK in order to inspire interest in programming amongst schoolchildren. Scratch also was created as an educational tool and is a simple, block-based, visual programming language that makes coding fun and accessible for people of all ages.

The design and aesthetic of the game is intentionally low-fi in order to reflect nostalgia for the punk DIY ethos of the Y2K era, a time when the internet was about creating, connecting and sharing, rather than lining the pockets of ruthlessly greedy tech moguls.

The game uses the UK's canal system, the network of waterways that was built during the Industrial Revolution to transport goods as an analogy for the internet, the information superhighway that was invented to transport data and was a catalyst for the fourth, so-called Technological Revolution.

It also serves as a portrait of the ever-changing nature of the post-industrial British landscape, taking players on a journey that delivers them from the housing estates and graffiti daubed warehouses of the inner city, past both derelict and hideously repurposed gas holders, alongside an ominously faceless data centre and eventually towards open fields freshly swathed in shiny blue photovoltaic panels.

Finally it is a love letter to the alternative, uncomplicated world of the canal, where it is still possible to live a simpler and quieter life and follow the nowtopian dream of existing peacefully and sustainably both offline and off grid.