Tag: . Video Games

Ada Lovelace, Al Gore, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Google and Where They Took Us All

handshake ccflickr smYou know what?  Not only did Al Gore never say that he invented the Internet, but he was one of its best advocates and understood the importance of the slew of people who really did.  They’re part of a surprisingly exciting and remarkable story told by Walter Isaacson in The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution.   It’s a fast-paced tour through the evolution of modern technology, from the prophetic work of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace (aka Lord Byron’s daughter) through the first computers, programming, the unsung (big surprise) but enormous contribution made by women technologists, transistors, microchips, video games, the Internet and the Web, as well as personal computees to access it.  The story is pretty amazing and yes, inspiring.

The people behind these developments, and the process that carried them, provide a rich narrative and a couple of surprising through-lines.  First, about patents and Nobel prizes: the men (and women) who brought us from The Difference Engine to the microchip to the Internet of Everything were not hoarders.  Although many of them received patents and made money from their work, rather than withholding developments, most shared them, even precise details.  They collaborated to build upon the genius of the ones before.  Secondly, much of their work, basic development and science as well as more sophisticated details, was funded by governments; a lot of the American work was funded under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  He saw American science leadership as a national security issue, and, as we consider what emerged from that federal funding, it’s hard to argue.

There are dozens of anecdotes as well as illuminating biographical profiles in The Innovators, including Alan Turing, currently played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the highly anticipated film The Imitation Game (Isaacson interviews the cast below).   Each story is a worthy candidate for inclusion here.  Better though, that like these heroic creators of what became our present and future, you read the book and discover them for yourself.

 

 

 

 

E3, FABLE II AND BEING THE PROUD MOM

I’ve written often about the ways life changes as your kids grow up and become adults.  We are blessed that both of ours have brought us so much joy.  This public accomplishment is really just icing on the cake; moment by moment is where the real wonder comes.  Even so, how could I not post it here?

The man on the right is my older son Josh.  Speaking at E3! (The annual video game trade show in LA) On G4 TV.  About Fable II, a game he has been working on for a very long time.  How cool is that?

GOD, VIDEO GAMES AND THE END OF THE WORLD

Leftbehindgames_promoToday on AlterNet – a wonderful aggregator of things political, there appeared the rather remarkable tale behind production of the video game Left Behind.  Based on the phenomenally best-selling series of books set during the arrival of the End Times and the Rapture, it sounds like it’s pretty violent for a religious game. 

I guess though that the entire story of the End Times is pretty grim.  I remember thinking that back when I first heard of these books.  It was around 7 years ago, when the first one came out.  I wandered back to the galley on a cross country flight and found the flight attendant transfixed, deeply involved in the story.  We spoke of it for some time; it meant a great deal to her.

Duck_and_cover_photo_2 I have always found apocalyptic stories riveting.  Maybe it’s growing up in the "duck and cover" era but the idea of the world ending in fire seemed so plausible in those times*  I was deeply affected by it, I think.  If you had to go under your desk in 2nd or 3rd grade and put your crossed hands over your neck, you’d be scared too.   

In addition to our air raid drills, there were books and movies like Alas, Babylon, On the Beach, and dozens of other nuclear disaster tales.  They were full of small, horrible moments.  I was pretty young but I remember, from Alas Babylon, mobs storming drugstores and looting them for medicine.  Even now it is probably the image of nuclear war that sits most viscerally in my mind.  My father had high blood pressure – and was lost without his hearing aid – and I remember fearing that a war would take away his medication and the hearing aid batteries that connected him to us.

The bombs always came from countries back then.  Now of course all it takes is a suitcase and some under-funded port security to empower someone bent on destruction.  It probably is no accident that the Left Behind books are so popular — there’s so much uncertainty and so much that’s frightening.  Which brings us back to the game.  Somehow it seems less acceptable to insert violence into a religious game, but as I become accustomed to the weekly reading of Torah portions I realize the bloody violence in the Bible itself.  Even God was not immune – his anger was swift and deadly.  The understanding of that somehow seems, at least partially, to justify the violence of apocalyptic literature.

So.  No conclusions — just a riff for a Wednesday night.  And the thought that if violence emerges so often in sacred works it’s an acknowledgment of those things in our natures that challenge us most… to keep our own rage, envy and hatred from popping out and contributing to chaos — in real life, on the pages of a book, or on an XBOX 360.