Tech Tent: Future farmers, Minecraft and Doom

Every Friday we digest the week's technology news on Tech Tent on the BBC World Service. Here's what we are looking at this week.

Big Data on the farm

It's the world's oldest industry and one you might not think was that forward-looking - but farming is undergoing a whole new data-driven revolution. From drones giving aerial surveys of crops, to combine harvesters measuring precisely the output of every square metre, or sensors giving minute-by-minute updates on the health of animals, farmers are handling an ever growing flood of data. We will be hearing from a chicken farmer who is adapting to this new way of working and our special guest is Rob Carter, the co-founder of Field Margin which aims to help farmers navigate their data via a smartphone app. By the way, our colleagues on BBC Radio 4's Farming Today have been covering technology and farming all week and have a special report on Saturday morning's On Your Farm.

Minecraft in the classroom

Since Microsoft bought Minecraft we've heard very little about its plans for the hugely popular world-building game. But this week the software giant announced a big push into education, launching a classroom version of the game. Our Jane Wakefield went along to BETT, the UK's giant educational technology show, to talk to Microsoft about the plan which allows children to learn through Minecraft at school and then continue to play at home. Schools will need to have an Office 365 account to log in to the education edition - we'll be asking whether this is part of Microsoft's strategy to battle Google as the prime software provider in the classroom.

Lessons from a Kickstarter

When the Zano mini-drone project crashed to earth last November, Kickstarter came in for a lot of criticism from the backers who had lost out. So the crowdfunding platform commissioned an investigative reporter to find out what went wrong. This week Mark Harris published his 13,000 word report, which is both an excruciating account of how not to run a technology business and a warning for anyone who does not understand that backing a crowdfunded project is not like ordering something from Amazon. We talk to him on the programme about where he thinks this leaves crowdfunding as a way of getting tech ideas off the ground.

Doom moves up a level

Twenty three years after the legendary game Doom came out, it still has a dedicated community of players, and they have something to celebrate this week. The first new level since the mid-1990s has been released by one of the original developers John Romero. Our reporter Zoe Kleinman has been talking to him - he admits he was nervous about how the community would react but most fans have been positive.

Tune in to the BBC World Service at 15:00 GMT for all that and more or catch the podcast later.