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Episode 11 Notes - Spacewar! Lives!

Aug 28, 2019

Spacewar is a remarkable game for a large number of reasons. It was one of the first video games ever made, first conceived by Steven Russel and his colleagues at MIT's AI Lab sometime in 1962. And despite the game's age it presents a core experience not that far off from modern video games. There were numerous firsts...


Aug 25, 2019

It really seems like in the last decade video games have gone from a somewhat niche hobby to a widespread part of our culture. Nowadays, there are a multitude of ways to get out gaming fix. Consoles, handheld game systems, and even smartphones make video games more accessible than ever. But when and how exactly did...


Aug 18, 2019

In this mini-episode we look at the Jargon File, an early primary source about hacker culture.

The most recent version of the file lives here: http://catb.org/jargon/html/

If you want more of my voice, I was also recently on the What Do You Do With That podcast talking about restoring an IBM PS/2 Model 25. You can find...


Episode 10 Notes - American Networking

Aug 14, 2019

There isn't such a thing as a single event we can point to as the "birth of the internet", but we do get close to an event like that during the Cold War. That was when ARPANET, an early iteration of widespread networking, was designed and built. And while there were an uncounted number of contributors to the design of...


Aug 11, 2019

In this episode we are going to explore the ARPANET. This is a companion to the last episode, which covered contemporary Soviet attempts to create an early internet.

Like with last time, today we are still in the Cold War era. Now, this won't be a point by point comparison of Soviet to US networks. They are totally...