J>A, r 5 ROLLING STONE DFCEMBFR 7, 1972
FanaticlJe and SymbolicDeath Anong the ComputerBu ms byStewa-t Brand whole battlesky, impervious to surprise attack. A game 1s over when only one or no survivors are displayed . The screen then blanks out, counts down 5-4-3-2-1, and redisplays a new battle with ships at new rand om positions eq uidistant from the sun and showing score accumula tive from previous games. A spaceship that is killed early in a battle will rein carnate after 16 seconds and reJom the EADY OR not, comput ers are Click: 5 (Five players . This is for the fray, so that a single battle may last up ) corni ng to the people. first familiarizatio n batt les in the to five minutes with a weak player per That's goo d news, maybe th e Spacewar Olympics, initiated by me ishing several times in it. best since p ychedelics. It's and sponsored (beer & prizes) by ROLL The twenty or so raucous competi way off the track of the "Comp uters ING STONE. Friends, I won't be able to tors in the Spacewar Olympics quickly T hreat or Me nace?" schoo l of libera l exp lain every computer-technical term organize three events: Five- Player critici sm bu t surp risingly in line with tha t comes by. Fortunately you don't Free-For-All, Team Competition (two the rom antic fantasies of the for efath need th em to get the gist of what's against two), and Singles Compet ition, ers of the science such as Nor bert happeni ng.) The executive office r o f the Al Pro Wiener , Warr en McCulloch , J .C. R. KEYBOARD BUTTONS? (ELSE ject, Les Earnest, who kindly OK ed Licklider , John vo n Neumann and LAR). TYPE YORN . these Olympics and their visibility, is Vannevar Bush . "Yes." Click : Y found to have no immed iate func tion The trend owes its health to an odd THE STANDARD GAMEJ S: and is sent out for beer. arra y of influenc es: Th e youthful fervor I CONSOLE, 2 TORPEDOT UBES, (NORM The sett ing and decor at Al is Mod and firm dis-Est ablishrnentarianisrn of .AL) ~r') RING, NO PARTIAL DAMAGE, ern Mad Scienti st long hallways and the freaks who des ign comput er science ; NO HYPERSPACE, KILLER SUN. SHIPS cubicle s and large wind owless roo ms, an astonishingly enlightened research START IN STANDARD POSITIONS. brutal fluorescent light , enormous ma program from the very top of the De TYPE Y TO GET A STANDARD GAME. chines humming and clattering, robots fense D epa rtment; an unexpected mar Ralph want s other featur es . "No ." on wheels, scurryi ng arcane technicians. ket-flank ing moveme nt by the manu Click : N And , also, posters and announcements factur ers of sma ll calcu lati ng mac hines, How MANY SPACE MINES agai nst the Vietnam War an d R ichard and an irrepr essible mid night phe nom WANT? Nixo n, comp uter print -out ph otos of enon known as Spacewar. CHOOSEFROM ZE RO TO 4. girlfrien ds , a hallwa y-long b a nner Rel iably, at any nighttime moment SOLVING TODAY'S PROBLEMS TOMOR (i.e. non-bu siness hours) in North Click: 4 ROW, and signs on every door in Tol America hundred s of computer tech PARTIAL DAMAGE? kien's elvish Feanorian script-the di nician s are effectively out of their Click : N rector' s office is lmladris , the coffee bodi es, locke d in life-o r-
Project MAC vet Peter Deutsch inside the Xerox building: More than a hacker, in the opinion of a colleague, "although he has some of that style. He's a virtuoso." had to do to get it to be a really good r--,r-- information-medium like computers . game. By changing the parameters you could change it anywhere from essen So in 1963 a fraction of ARPA's bud tially just random, where it was pure get, some $5-8 million, went into a luck, to something where skill and ex program called IPT, Information Pro perience counted above everything cessing Techniques, under the initial direction of Licklider and then of a 26- else. The normal choice is somewhere year-old named Ivan Sutherland . Suth between those two. With Spacewar erland, the developer of "Sketchpad" an experienced player can beat an at MIT, gave the agency its bias amateur for maybe 20 to 50 games and toward interactive graphics and its then the amateur begins to win a little." commitment to "blue sky mode" re The pride of any hacker with a new search. The next director, Bob Taylor , program is its "features." Fresh forms then 32, doubled IPTs budget (while of Spacewar with exotic new features ARPA's overall budget was shrinking) prolifer~ted. As Russell explains it, and administered a five-year golden age everyth.mg at MIT had priority over in computer research. Spacewar, but it was an educational 1-..'imd!II•~~ The beauty was, that being at the very computer after all, and developing top of the Defense Establishment, the new programs (of Spacewar) was edu agency had little Congressional scrutiny cational, and then those programs and little bureaucratic responsibility, n_eeded testing ... The initial game of able to take creative chances and pro simply two spaceships and their torpe tect long-term deep-goal projects. Alan does didn't last long. Gravity was introduced. Then Peter u______Kay: "90 percent of all good things that -'.§lii.aa..S..==:! I can think of that have been done in by IBM researchers. After a few sud Samson wrote in the starfield with a ETER DEUTSCH,now at Xerox computer science have been done fund program called "Expensive Planetari Research Center , reminisces denly uncreative months of joyless re ed by that agency. Chances that they um" (MITs first text display had been about the first Spacewar: "The search the ban was rescinded. Appar would have been funded elsewhere are called "Expensive Typewriter"). Rus programming of the thing was ently, frivolous Spacewar had been the very low. The basic ARPA idea is that P medium of important experiments. (In sell: "Having a background was im a remarkable tour de force, because you find good people and you give them portant to give some idea of range and the machine did not have a multiply or every computer-busin ess story I've ever a lot of money and then you step back. so on. Our Spacewar did not have divide. The way that the outline of the heard, IBM invariably plays the heavy.) If they don't do good things in three gravity affecting the torp edoes-our spaceship was rotate d was by compil Les Earnest at AI confirms the moral. years they get dropped-where 'good' is explanation was that they were photon ing a special-purpose progra m. Nice For instance, at his lab the ingenious very much related to new or interesting." bombs and that they weren't affected programming trick ... Spacewar was device for handling interactive graphics Legends abound from early ARP A by gravity. Subsequent versions on not an outgr owth of any work on com on the time-shared computer is called days, full of freedom and weirdness. newer computers have got enough com puter graphics, but it may hav~ inspir "Spacewar Mode" in honor of its ori Here's one of many from Project MAC pute time so that they can afford to use ed some of it. That's speculation." gins. (Multiple Access Computer) days-Alan gravity for the torpedoes, and that Albert Kuhfeld, writing in July, Surprisingly, there have been rela Kay: "They had a thing on the PDP-I makes it a more interesting game." 1971, Analog Magazine, reminisces: tively few Spacewar-like games invent called 'The Unknown Glitch' ["Glitch" And then there came a startli ng "The first few years of Spacewar at ed. The most elaborate is a "Snoopy -a kink, a less-than-fatal but irritating , and the Red Baron" game which in development called Hyperspace- when MIT were the best. The game was in a fuck-up]. They used to program the volves flying your console like a bi your situation got desperate you could rough state, students were working thing either in direct machine code, di plane. But computer graphics as an area push both tum buttons at once and go their hearts out improving it, and the rect octal, or in DDT. In the early days of research has mushroomed. The field into hyperspace: disappear from the faculty was nodding benignly as they it was a paper-tape machine. It was is too wide and deep and engrossing for screen for a few seconds and then re watched the students learning com painful to assemble stuff, so they never me to report here. It's an art form wait appear at a random new position . . . puter theory faster and more painlessly listed out the programs. The programs ing for artists, a consciousness form maybe . than they'd ever seen before . .. And a and stuff just lived in there, just raw background of real-time interactive pro waiting for mystics. seething octal code. And one of the guys "Hypers pace was in within a month All right, one sample: the vision hel or so," says Russell. "It' s a little con gramming was being built up that wrote a program called 'T he Unknown anybody in the school could draw on; met designed by Ivan Sutherland at Glitch,' which at random intervals troversial. Some people deplore it, and Harvard. The helmet covers the front it's fairly common to play games with one of the largest problems in the would wake up, print out I AM THE development of the game was learning of your face with special goggles that UNKNOWN GLITCH. CATCH ME IF out it .... It was of course vital to put in arc tiny computer-driven TV screens. problems with hyperspace. You know, how to talk to a computer program and You CAN, and then it would relocate have it answer back." They present you with a visual space itself somewhere else in core memory, when you come back into normal space in which you can move. The computer from hyperspace, there is initially a Within weeks of its invention Space set a clock interrupt, and go back to war was spreading across the country monitors where your head moves and sleep. There was no way to find it." small energy-well which looks amaz alters what you see accordingly. In the ingly like a star; if a torpedo is shot to other computer research centers, who One of the accomplishments of began adding their own wrinkles. projected reality you can look around, ARPA-funded research during this time into that energy well, Jo and behold the you can look behind you, you can move ship blows up. There is also a certain There was a variation called Minne was time-sharing. Time-sharing is a sota Hyperspace in which you kept your toward things and through them. You routing technique that allows a large probability of blowing up as you final can furthermore change parameters. ly break out of hyperspace. Our ex position but became invisible; however number of users to sit down "on-line" if you applied thrust, your rocket flame Your head goes forward a foot and in with a computer as if each were all planation was that these were the the vision you soar a hundred yards. Mark One hyperfield generators and could be seen . ... Score-keeping. Space alone with it. Naturally, time-sharing mines. Partial damage-if hit in a fin Or you can travel in exaggerated rela was of no interest to computer manu they hadn't done really a thorough job tivistic space, so that if you lunge at of testing them-they had rushed them you could not tum in that direction. facturers like IBM since it meant dras something it bends away . Become a tically more efficient use of their hard into the fleet. And unfortunately the Then "2½-0" Spaa:war, played on geometric point; become enormous; ware, and they were still a long way energies that were being dissipated in two consoles. Instead of being God live out Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. from saturating titeir market with old the generators at breakout were just viewing the whole battle, you're a mere technology. Only after ARP A had devel barely what they could handle . So the pilot with a view out the front of your oped time-sharing and its research-cen probability of the generator flying apart spaceship and the difficult task of find AIPA ter market in the mid-Sixties did the man and completely killing the spaceship ing your enemy. (Perspective could be The letters stand for Advanced Re ufacturers adopt the innovation and was noticeable on the first couple of compressed so that even though far search Projects Agency, one of the rare make it available to the rest of us. uses, and after four uses it was only an away the other ship would be large success stories of Government action. even chance of surviving hyperspace . Poetically enough it owes its origin to There's a political/economic moral in enough to see.) this story somewhere; I think it has to So it was something that you could use real spacewar. After Russia's Sputnik Adding incentive, MIT introduced an do with the benefits of variant parallel but it wasn't something that you want electric shock to go with the explosion humiliated the US in the middle of the Fifties, America came back hard with systems. ed to use." of your ship. A promising future is seen ARP A is a rare but not completely for sound effects. And now a few com the Mercury Program, John Glenn and isolated instance of enlightened gov "Doc" Smith: mercial versions of Spacewar-25 cents all that, crash-funded through a new agency directly under the Secretary of ernment research. For years the Office "Twenty-odd years before, when the a game-are appearing in university cof of Naval Research funded the most out then Dauntless and her crew were Defense- ARPA. fee shops. When the US space program was standing work in pure mathematics thrown out of a hyper-spatial tube and Steve Russell still dreams : "Some without any hope of benefits for war into that highly enigmatic Nth space, moved out of the military to become thing which I wanted to do is get some NASA, ARPA was left with a lot of making. LaVerne Thorndyke had been Chief interesting sort of fleet action . There In 1969 the political climate at ARPA Technician . Mentor of Arisia found funding momentum and not much pro are some versions of Spacewar which gram. Into this vacuum stepped J.C.R. changed with the passing into law of the them, and put into the mind of Sir allow two, three ships, but as far as I Mansfield Amendment, which required Austin Cardynge, mathematician extra Licklider among others, with the sug know no one has been sufficiently clever gestion that since the Defense Depart that military-funded research serve ordinary, the knowledge of how to find to set things up so there are ships with only clearly military goals and answer to the way back to normal space. Thorn ment was the world's largest user of noticeably different characteristics that computers, it would do well to support Congress on the matter. In other words, dyke, working under nerve-shattering could fight in interesting combina the Defense Department was forbidden difficulties, had been in charge of build large-tcale basic research in computer tions." science. It was ARPA's policy in those to try to obsolesce itself. Bob Taylor ing the machines which were to enable departed ARP A. the vessel to return to her home apace. John Lilly (of dolphin, acid, and bio days that basic research be neither se The next (and current) director at He built them. She returned." computer fame) tells a story that IBM cret nor limited to military purposes, -Children of the Lens (1954) once forbade the playing of Spacewar which boded well for exploration in an ARPA-IPT was Larry Roberts, a bril- ROLLING STONf / DECEMBFR 7, 1972
Immed,atel y he/ow left. chief marble collector Bob Taylor; and right, quiz kid emeritus Alan Kay. Below him, the Dynabook.; the pocket calculator; the Bean-Bag Room . Center left, the autho r draws with the computer . liant researcher who had developed the first 3-D v1 ion program s. His major And that is the general bent of re proje t has been getting the ARPA Net search at Xerox, soft, away from huge work up . ("Up" nround computers ness and centrality, toward the small · means working , the opposite of and the persona l, toward putting maxi "dow n" or crashed .) The drenm for the mum comp uter power in the hands of Net was t~~t. researchers tt widely sep every individual who wants it. arated fac1ht_1es could hare special re In one direction this means the auto sources, dip into each other's files, and mated office, replacing paper, desk and even work on-line toget her on design phone with an interactive console - af problems too complex to solve alone. fording the possibility of doing the At present some 20 major computer whole of city work in a country cottage . centers re linked on the two-year The basic medium here is the text man old ARPA Net. Traffic on the Net has ipulation system developed at Doug been very slow, due to delays and dif Engelbart's Augme ntation Research ficulties of translation between differ Center, which, as Doug puts it, allows ent computers and divergent projects . you to " fly" fo rmerly unreachable Use has recently begun to increase breadths and depths of your informa as researchers travel from center to tion matrix of your know ledge. Ask center and want to keep in touch with for item so-and-so from your file; home base, and as more tantalizing, blink , there it is. Make some changes; it's harable resources come available. changed . Designate keywords there How Net usage will evolve is uncer and there; done. Request a definition tain . There's a curious mix of theoret of that word; blink, presented. Find a ical fascination and operational resis quote from a document in a friend's tance around the scheme . The resis file; blink, blink, blink, found. Behind tance may have something to do with re that statement add a substatement giv luctanc es about equipp ing a future Big ing cross-references and cross-access; Brother and his Cen tral Computer. provided. Add a diagra m and two pho Th e fascination resides in the thorough tos; sized and added. Send the entire rightness of comp uters as communica document to the attentio n C'f these peo tio ns instrum ents, which implies some ple; sent. Plus one on paper to mail to revolut ions. Washington; gz zaap , hardcopy, with One pop ular new feature on the Net an addressed envelope. That's for grownups . Alan Kay is is Al's Associated Press service. From more interested in us kids. He repudi anywhere on the Net you can log in ates the manipulative arrogance of and get the news that's coming live "Computer-Aided Instruction" and over the wire or ask for all the items on serves the dictum of Seymour Papert, a partic ular subject that have come in "Should the computer program the kid during the last 24 hours. Plus a fortune or should the kid program the comput coo kie. Project that to household ter err· minals , and so much for newspape rs Alan is designing a hand-held stand (in present form) . alone interac tive- gr aphi c computer Since huge quant ities of information (about the size, shape and diversity of can be computer-d igitalized and trans a Whole Earth Catal og. electric) called mitted, music researc hers could , for "Dynabook." It's mostly high-resolu exa mple, swap records over the Net tion display screen, with a keyboard on with "essentially perfect fidelity ." So the lower third and various cassette much fo r record stores (in present loading slots, optional hook-up plugs, form) . etc. His coll eagu e Bill Engli sh de I asked Alan Kay if Spacewar had scribes the fantas y thus: been played over the Net. He said it's "It stores a couple of million charac possible . I asked if there'd been inter ters of text and does all the text hand national Spacewar yet, and was told a ling for you- editing, viewing, scan story. "There's a problem there of send ning, things of that nature. It'll have ing code groups. When Greenblatt's a graphics capability which'll let you chess program reigned supreme , they make sketches, make drawings. Alan tried to play one of the Russian chess ~ wants to incorporat e music in it so you programs . Instead of doing it by mail .& can use it for composing. It has the or using an international phone call .5 Smalltalk language capa bility which they decided to do it by amateur radio. ~ lets people program their own things There's this federal statute again st ~ very easily. We want to interface them transmitting code groups of any kind, ~ with a tinker-toy kind of thing . And of including chess moves . It took a long i course it plays Spacewar." time to straighten that out. There was ~ The drawing capability is a program eventual communication with the Rus- f that Kay designed called "Paintbrush." sians through a ham link in Switzer land and Dave Evans at Utah, present HE CHIEF marble collector is Working with ·a stylus on the display land." ly a researcher at Xerox . Alan shifts well, well- Bob Taylor. When screen, you reach up and select a shape True hacker s? Who won? comfortably in his office bean-bag chair he left the newly restricted of brush, then move the bru sh over and "Greenblatt's program won. It's cal and appraises his colleagues . "This is ARPA he spent a year at Utah pick up a shade of halftone screen you led 'MAC Hack 6.' It was a Class C really a frightening group, by far the decompressingI from the Pentag on and like, then paint with it. If you make a player , and has since been superseded best I know of as far as talent and then went to Xerox and there contin mistake, paint it out with "white." The by a couple of other programs ." Poor creativity . The people here all have ued his practice of finding and reward screen simultaneousl y displays the im Russia . Do they regret Sputnik and the track records and are used to dealing ing good men for doing pretty much age you're working on and a one-third dialectical forces lt unleashed? lightning with both hands ." whatever they considered important reduction of it, where the dot pattern The western pole of the US elec Peter Deutsch, bearded and intent , work . Freedom to explore in the com becomes a shaded halftone. tronics research and manufacturing ax 26 veteran of the · early days at Pro pany of talent is an irresistible lure. In A Dynabook could link up with other is is the San Francisco Peninsula ; the jedt MAC, has served on every major two years Xerox had twenty of the best Dynabooks, with library facilities, with eastern end is Boston's Route 128. The front in computer science, now has a men around working. Toward what? the telephone , and it could go and hide tilt of talent is westward . cubicle near Kay's at Xerox Research Well, whatever. where a child hides. Alan is determin Xerox Re earch Center 1s an idyll, Center . Alan remarks on his neighbor, I ask Bob Taylor about his position ed to keep the cost below $500 so that a new buildmg high on an oak- avan "Peter is in my opinion the world's at Xerox . "It's not very sharply defin school systems could provide Dyna nahcd golden foothill in Stanford' s in greatest programmer . He's much more ed. You could call me a research plan books free out of their textbook bud dustrial park m Palo Alto , California, than a hacker, although he has some of ner." He's Texas born, trained in ex gets. If Xerox Corporation decides to go a blue-skied shimmery threatles land that style. He's a virtuoso ; his pro perimental psychology, soft-spoken . with the concept and expand out of its scape. "Every time I think of that place grams have very few mistake s. He has Where Alan Kay would summar ize one office equipment rut, the Dynabook s I start to scratch my balh It makes me probably more written code running of Taylor's papers with the statement could be available in two or three nervous ," argue s dome and solar de than anybody in the ARPA com "Economy of scale i, one of the biggest years, but that's up to Product Devel signer Steve Baer from dusty Albuquer munity ." frauds ever invented," Taylor will re opment, not Alan or the Research Cen que , recalhng that mo t of the e"'.11he But Peter doesn't work for ARPA spond to a quest10n about the econom ter. knows has emitted from similar ivory any more . One who does, Smokey, at ics of massive operauons like huge Peter Deutsch comments : "Proce ss towers. Stanford Research Institute Augmen computer complexes with a long look, ers and memones are getting smaller Alan Kay, 32, child prodigy (Nation tation Research Center, tells Peter, a puff of pipe smoke, and a remark and cheaper . Five years ago the idea al Qu11 Kid at ten), former musician "You get just a few more agates in that that "the benefits arc less than claim and artist, worked with Ivan Suther- group and you'll have all the marbles ." ed." - Continued on Next Page A couple of Spacewar Olympians enjoy the free beer & a11una uthorized TV screen production. Below, Pam Hart with her People's X DS 940: "People want to know about comp uters- not to use them, necessarily, but how they're used against them ." of a Dynabook would have been abso lutely ridiculous . ow it merely seems "We negotiated the contract, got a difficult . . . The emergence of com 940 [free], which we refurbished . It puters into society at large has come arrived last April ; we in tailed it in from a completely different quarter June. It was probably the fastest ma than you'd expect, namely the small chine installation ever: We had it up in three days. We were really fortunate calculating machine manufacturers. the whole time. We had a lot of people The current ultimate step in that di from Xerox Park, a lot of the old peo rection is the Hewlett-Packard Pocket ple from Berkeley Computer Corpora Calculator. They sell for $400 and tion, that have assisted us in areas th_ey're essentially a small codiputer where we weren't totally sure of the with no program and very little stor appropriate thing to do ourselves. age. Wang Laboratories makes cal Peter Deutsch brought up the operating culators which are really computers in system. all but name - they're programmable; "Now we're a little more stable eco they have lots of storage . ... But still nomically. We got a foundation grant these things only reach thousands of of $!0 ,000 last 'ovember from Stern. people, not millions . They'll reach mil Then we borrowed $8000 from the lions when computer power becomes Whole Earth Catalog, of which we like telephone power. . . . I think it's paid back six. [ ews to me. This was important to bring computing to the part of the $20,000 I had turned over to people." the mob at the Catalog Demise P· rty. One Fred Moore finally signed for tounfcr-oompufcr $15,000 of it and ran a series of sub sequent consensus mon ey decidings, ow MAS S use of co mput ers which evid entl y were susceptible to might go is not even slightly Pam's soft voice and clear head.] After known as yet, except for obvi two years we're right there at the be Dou s applicat ions in the schools . ginning point of actually being able to One inform ative place to inquire is do the things that we said we wanted among the hackers , particul arly at to do. night when they're pursuing their own "One of the first things we have to interests . do is have a retrieval system that's One night at a computer cen ter general enough th at it can hand le (nameless) I wandered off fro m the things like Switchboard referral infor Spacewar game to a clattering print mation, also people who are doing in out machine where a (nameless) young vestigative work on corpora tions, peo man with a trim beard was scanning ple doing research on foundation , a column s of entries like, "Pam $1.59, whole lot of different groups either Bud $14.75, Annie $2.66." He was an willing or not willing to share data employee taking advantage of unbu sy bases. after hours time on the computer (com "We're interested in some health puters are never turned ofl) to run his care statistical systems. There are a lot commune accounts . of Free Clinics in the city , and they "Money seems to be a very sensi have to do all of their work by hand . tive issue," he explained, "more sensi We want to incorporate a system -doing tive than sex, even. People in the house statistical work for the clinics, charging who went on vacation for a week didn't the Health Centers that have money want to be charged for the food during and not charging the Free Clinics that that time and so forth. It was taking don't have money. me hours and hours every month to "A third area is using government figure out people's house bills. Now it generated tapes like assessor's tapes takes about a half hour a month. Every and census tapes, and start trying to do week I stick up a list on the refriger some analysis of the city. And the edu ator, and anyone who buys food or any cation program. The ideas include thing for the house writes it down on what Dymax is doing -set up a little the list. I type all that into the comput recreation center where people could er, along with the mortgage payment come and play games and hopefully and the phone bills and the gas bill. some of them would be learning games. The House Bill Program goes around And then I'm interested in doing com and divides up the common charges munity educat ion with video tape . Peo and adds in all the special charges and ple want to know about computers, figures out exactly who owes who how not how to use them, necessarily, but much. Each person at the end of the how they're used against them." month gets a bill plus a complete Counter-computer. At present there breakdown of what their money goes one else's computer is having your own on the second floor. [Project One is a are ten people in the core group at to." compuier. Hear now the saga of Pam five-story warehouse in the south-of. Resource One ranging in age from 19 That's pretty good . What else goes Hart and Resource One. In 1969 Pam Market area of San Francisco . It start to 30 (Pam is 25), with decisions made on around here in moonlight mode? was a computer programmer at Berk ed in 1970 with a radio announcement; by consensus . "A friend of mine has his recording eley who found the work "just too dis "If you're interested in building a com Another scheme in the works in tape library index on the computer . illusioning . Then during the Cambodia munity and cheap space and sharing re volves the people around Steve Beck Everyone does their term papers and Invasion demonstrations in Berkeley sources, come to Project One." Within at the National Center for Experiments their theses on it. It'll justify margins, a group of us got together and designed two weeks the building was filled with in Television a few blocks away. Steve incorporate corrections, handle illus a retrieval program for coordinating 200 artists, craftsmen, technicians and has built the world's first real-tim trations, paging, footnotes, headings, all of the actions on campus . It was a ex-professionals, and their families.) video synthesizer - the video equivalent indexing .... Two years ago when we fairly dead system, but what it did was We worked on designing a retrieval of the Moogs, Buchlas, and Arps of had the great faculty strike against the it brought together people who had system so all the switchboards in the music synthesis. It's a natural to hnk War, we rigged up a program that never worked together before and start· City could interact, using a common up with a computer . The current plan would type out a form letter to all your ed them talking and thinking about data base, with all the care taken for is for Steve and his equipment to move congressmen and type in your name how it was actually possible to do privacy and knowing who put stuff in into the basement below Resource and address. something positive with technology, so you could refer back. Hopefully you One, which hould liven up the cene - "Bruce is working on an astrology when you define the goals." could generate lists that were updated Pam's gang is short on true hacker program. You put in your birthplace Computing power to the people . So and be as on-line as possible. time-wasung frivohty: they're "'arm, and date, down to the minute, and it began one of the great hustles of mod "We found that it just did not work but rather stodgier than some of the gives you all your aspects, your chart. em times. Peter Deutsch is still awed: using borrowed time, stolen time, Government-funded folks. Maybe the You can get your progress chart too ... "Pam could hustle blood from a tur bought time we couldn't afford it. So video link-up will give us some higher One of the hackers is building a com nip." She speaks quietly in a hasty, about a year later we set about getting levels of Spacewar on the way to ex puter at home out of Army surplus gentle, self-effacing murmur . You have surplus. After a couple of months of ploring new territory entirely. In I\ hat parts, and he's using the facilities here to lean close to hear the lady helping calling everybody in San Francisco that directions the computer-use at Re to help his design, because we have you help her to plant dynamite in the was related to computers. Trans source One evolves should be of mter this huge battery of computer design very heart of the Combine. america said that they had three XD est. If I were a computer manufacturer programs ." "Four of us came from Berkeley to 940s in a warehouse [each costing I'd pay the close t attention and maybe Indeed. Far beyond borrowing some- Project One and set up in a little office $300,000 new] donate some goodies . PAGE 58 ROLLING STONE / DECEMBER 7, 1972
The Resource One crowd: And moving into the basement- the inventor of the world's first real-time video equivalent of a Moog Synthesizer do it. I think electronics stores may COllfrolnd Sponfaneuy carry the chips. 'M NO manufacturer , but I'm a "The controls for Spacewar arc triv hungry enough potential user to ial. The simplest way is to go to a radio ~retend _briefly that I know what control store- like for model airplanes I m talking about and run a trial and get the front end of the radio con polemicI . .. troller, which has two sets of joystick s Un!il computers come to the people and the pots and everything else. You we will have no real idea of their most can use those as the inputs to the ana natural functions . Up to the present logue computer. They only cost some their cost and size has kept therp in the thing like thirty bucks.» Once you have province of rich and powerful institu the computer, your own or someone tions, who, understandably , have de else's, you can write your own Space ~eloped ~hem primarily as bookkeep war program or start with this one of ing, sorting and control devices. The Kay's: computers have been a priceless aid in ~eeping the lid on top-down organiza to ship .size tton . They are splendidly impressive as penup, left 180, forward 2 • size , right 90 oracles of (programmable) Truth the forward 1 • size . right 90 pendown, forward 4 • size , nght 30 , forward lofty voice of unchallengeable au~hor 2 • size ity. r ight 120, forward 2 • size right 30, forward 4 • size In fact, computers don't know shit. right 30, forward 2 • size Their especial talent in the direction of right 120, forward 2 • size left 150, forward ·a,ze • 2 • sqrt 3 intelligence is the ability to make elab left 330, fo~d size • 2 orate models and fiddle with them, to righl 60, forward size • 2 • Ed · McCracken, Hewlett-Packard, answer in detail questions that begin 2) It encouraged new program left 330, forward size • 2 • sqrt 3 ming by the user. 11000 Wolf Rd., Cupertino, Ca. 95014 penup, left 90. forward size, right 90 "What if .. ?" In this they parallel (and forwa rd 2 • .size DEC has what they call Edu Sys can help) the acquiring of intelligence 3) It bonded human and machine end to through a responsive broadband in tems, three families of computers rang to flame size by children. But the basic fact of com ing from a single-terminal PDP-8 ($7K penup, left 180, forward 2 + sqrt 3, pendown puter use is "Garbage In, Garbage terface of live graphics display. triangle size, forward .5 • .size [$7000]; can handle up to 16 termi tnangle 1 5 • ·size , forward .5 • size Out"-if you feed the . compu ter non 4) It served primarily as a com nals) to the big POP-10 (S500K). And triangle 2 • size , forward s • size munication device between human s. triangle 1 • slze , forward 1 • size sense, it will dutifully convert your mis H-P has their 2000-series, ranging from take into insanity-cubed and feed it S) It was a game. etc 6) It functioned best on stand the 2000E ($SOK) to the 2000C end to back to you. Children are different to flash (S300K). "Garbage In, Foo d Out" is common alone equipment (and disrupted etc _. multiple-user equipment) . Some school systems are starting to retro with them. Again, the benefits of var etc • 7) It served human interest, not miniature ARPA Nets. Bob Albrecht iant para llel systems. Computer func rotorp machine. (Spacewar is trivial to a reports, "Minnesota may become the etc tion is mostly one-track-mind , in which first state to have a statewide net ro spaceship pUot thrust steer .tngger inconsistency is intolerable. The hu computer .) use numtorps location {x y) speed d1rection 8) It was delightful. work where every kid will have ac ,.,,.., man mind functions on multiple tracks cess to a computer. There arc more move1h1p In those days of batch processing if trigger and :numtorps < 3 (not all of them accessible); it can tol than 200 schools already tied into the erate and even thrive on inconsistency. and passive consumerism (data was then create torpedo speed dIrect1on location something you sent to the manufac network. And Long Island has a con ?crash ·self I suggest that the parallel holds for display ship turer, like color film), Spacewar was sortium with 40 schools on a PDP-IO." pause until clock : _time • .movelag the overall pictur e of computer use. heresy, uninvited and unwelcome. Finally, there are starting to be end to Where a few brilliantly stupid com The hackers made Spacewar, not the places where you can step in off the to moveshlp puters can wreak havoc, a host of mod make :speed be :speed • (:spscale • thrust) planners . street and compute, and some of these make :direc tion be .direction + {:dirscale • steer) est computer s (and some brilliant ones) When computers become available have newsletters, games, etc., that they rem 360 serving innumerable individual pur make ;locat1on ;x be location ;x + (:lscale • speed to everybody, the hackers-' take over: can send you. Write to: • cos ·direction) rem 1024 poses can be healthful , can repair hav We are all Computer Bums, all more • Bob Albrecht, People's Computer make :location ·y be locatlon ·y + (:lscale ··speed oc, feed life. (Likewise, .-20 crummy • sin d irection) rem 1024 empowered as individuals and as co Center, Box 310, Menlo Park , Ca.94025 end to , speakers at once will give better sound operators. That might enhance things (Publishes a splendid newsletter· on re to display "·obj fidelity than one excellent speaker - try penup, moveto ·location, tum .direction . .. like the richness and rigor of spon creational and educational uses of crNtl :qbj ·size it.) taneous creation and of human inter computers.) If thrust >O then create flame ·size . Spacewar serves Earthpeace . So • Bob Kahn, Lawrence Hall of ,f :thrust