TITLE
Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums
AUTHOR
Stewart Brand
PUBLICATION
Rolling Stone
YEAR
1972
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
Ready or not, computers are coming to the people.That’s good news, maybe the best since psychedelics. It’s way off the track of the “Computers – Threat or menace?” school of liberal criticism but surprisingly in line with the romantic fantasies of the forefathers of the science such as Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, J.C.R. Licklider, John von Neumann and Vannevar Bush.
The trend owes its health to an odd array of influences: The youthful fervor and firm dis-Establishmentarianism of the freaks who design computer science; an astonishingly enlightened research program from the very top of the Defense Department; an unexpected market-Banking movement by the manufacturers of small calculating machines, and an irrepressible midnight phenomenon known as Spacewar.
GAMES MENTIONED
Spacewar!
TOPICS MENTIONED
Esports
PRINT AVAILABILITY
December 7, 1972