Brief book report: BUILDING SIM CITY: How to Put the World in a Machine, by Chaim Gingold, is an exhilarating read.
It is one of the best origin stories ever told and the best account I've seen of how innovation actually occurs in computerdom. 🧵
It is one of the best origin stories ever told and the best account I've seen of how innovation actually occurs in computerdom. 🧵
Of course I checked the few moments where I intersected with the events in the story. They are tone-perfect, detail-perfect, and context-perfect. More so than I've ever seen before.
I trust this book. It tells revelatory truth.
I trust this book. It tells revelatory truth.
The exhaustively-researched illustrations are brilliant, and shockingly well printed in color--you can read them in depth. 
In the book, you get to Will Wright, Sim City, and Maxis about halfway through.
First comes everything that led to them--radical city-modeling for school kids, system dynamics, cellular automata, graphical interfaces, Santa Fe Institute, early computer games, and the people that made them, and why, and how. /End
First comes everything that led to them--radical city-modeling for school kids, system dynamics, cellular automata, graphical interfaces, Santa Fe Institute, early computer games, and the people that made them, and why, and how. /End
I should add:
In 2006, Will Wright teamed up with Brian Eno to have a conversation on stage for The Long Now Foundation, titled "Playing with Time." I joined them for the Q&A.
Viewable here:
In 2006, Will Wright teamed up with Brian Eno to have a conversation on stage for The Long Now Foundation, titled "Playing with Time." I joined them for the Q&A.
Viewable here:
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