Henry Jenkins offers a Boston-centric history of video games, from Spacewar to Guitar Hero.
How the Tech Model Railroad Club Changed the World
November 5th, 2007 · 2 Comments
Tags: Asides · Games and Gaming · Technology
A few of my favorites:
I’m still the luckiest guy in the world.
Blains, dyspepsia, and flatulence.
What’s the matter with Canada?
Does the history of telephony ca. 1900 offer lessons for the telecom world of today?
Scratching and needle-dropping, ca. 1917. Plus: Gloria Swanson looking gothy.
Most recent posts:
Kate Beaton is awesome.
Teaching history from back from front.
A course I’d like to teach on gaming, simulation, and history.
Peeing dogs, Donkey Kong, lesbians, sitcoms, and gin.
Spybots invade English village.
In loose Borgesian categories:
Henry Jenkins offers a Boston-centric history of video games, from Spacewar to Guitar Hero.
Tags: Asides · Games and Gaming · Technology
Interwob links to confound and bemuse:
The SITI Program
The Search for Intelligence on the Internet: My man Mark Rayner plugs the numbers into the Drake equation, predicts that there should be 2.7 intelligent blogs in cyberspace. Keep watching the skies!
The Tank
Tom Englehardt posts Chalmers Johnson’s review of Alex Abella’s new history of RAND.
Note To Self: Ia Fhtagn
What appears to be H.P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book: creepy images, story ideas, and games he’d like to run. (Via Felix Gilman.)
High Tech Noon
Do not laser-shark me, oh my darling: isn’t everything better with rayguns?
Men In Tights
It’s been well linked (Barista assumed it was taking the piss but I think he underestimates Chabon’s geeky earnestness) but it’s worth it: Michael Chabon on the superhero unitard. PS How good is All-Star Superman, am I right?
The Cardboard Internet
Paul Collins on the Mundaneum, a networked encyclopedia on fifteen million index cards (shades of the Memex?). Plus index cards as (literally) the U.S. War Department’s killer app.
Google Maps of Sci-Fi
BLDG BLOG’s Geoff Manaugh on mapping the fictional onto the real.
More Dick
You heard it here first:* Moby Dick is awesome! (*No, you didn’t.)
Au Clair de la Lune
Feast your ears on the oldest known sound recording–from 17 years before Edison’s phonograph. (Via Corn Chips & Pie.)
The Pickle King of Islamistan
Khalid (née Bertram) Sheldrake, the “power hungry, toothbrush mustachioed, British ninny” who somehow failed to convert western China to Islam.
Invisible elves make our site go:
© 2001–2007 Rob MacDougall

2 responses so far ↓
1 Bryant // Nov 5, 2007 at 11:10 am
Good history. From the Turbine perspective, I’d add that one of the company’s founders had been an undergrad at MIT (so the connection is there); more directly, everyone who started Turbine was at Brown University when the company started. Boston’s gaming industry is very academically rooted, which is probably no surprise.
Asheron’s Call was certainly groundbreaking — it was a race between AC and Everquest to see who’d have the first 3D environment on the market. AC also went for a relatively literary backstory. It was a big deal to the developers that AC didn’t use elves, dwarves, and so forth. In a fairly real sense, you could think of AC as the Jorune/Tekumel/Talislanta of MMORPGs.
2 Robert (model railroad fan) Anderson // Apr 13, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Model railroading is my hobby of choice. The world you create, where you create it, and how much time you spend in it… is entirely over to you. A highly recommended hobby!
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