WELCOME TO BOATS V BOTS!

Boats v Bots was created in 2026 by visual artist and educator Jacqui Harrison in order to illustrate what she regards as an alarming escalation in society's dependence upon digital technology.

The project aims to bring attention to the fact that as we increasingly rely upon Artificial Intelligence to provide us with information we are not only reducing our ability to think critically but we are also allowing AI to consume unsustainable quantities of natural resources.

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

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 established as an educational tool and is a simple, block-based, visual programming language that makes coding fun and accessible for young people of all ages.

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