Nancy and I are sitting there with William Gibson and Deb
Gibson feeling very cool and rather jetlagged and crispy
around the edges, and in walks this *woman.* Out of
nowhere. Like J. Random Attractive Redhead, right. And
she sits down with her coffeecup right at our table. And
we peer at each other's namebadges, right, like, *who is
this person.* And her name is Brenda Laurel.
So what do I say? I say to this total stranger, I
say. "Hey. Are you the Brenda Laurel who did that book
on *the art of the computer-human interface*? You
*are*? Wow, I loved that book." And yes -- that's why
I'm here as your guest speaker tonight, ladies and
gentleman. It's because I can think fast on my feet.
It's because I'm the kind of author who likes to hang out
in Adolf Hitler's home town with the High Priestess of
Weird.
So ladies and gentlemen unfortunately I can't
successfully pretend that I know much about your
profession. I mean actually I do know a *few* things
about your profession.... For instance, I was on the far
side of the Great Crash of 1984. I was one of the
civilian crashees, meaning that was about when I gave up
twitch games. That was when I gave up my Atari 800. As
to why my Atari 800 became a boat-anchor I'm still not
sure.... It was quite mysterious when it happened, it was
inexplicable, kind of like the passing of a pestilence or
the waning of the moon. If I understood this phenomenon I
think I would really have my teeth set into something
profound and vitally interesting... Like, my Atari still
works today, I still own it. Why don't I get it out of
its box and fire up a few cartridges? Nothing physical
preventing me. Just some subtle but intense sense of
revulsion. Almost like a Sartrean nausea. Why this
should be attached to a piece of computer hardware is
difficult to say.
My favorite games nowadays are Sim City, Sim Earth
and Hidden Agenda... I had Balance of the Planet on my
hard disk, but I was so stricken with guilt by the
digitized photo of the author and his spouse that I
deleted the game, long before I could figure out how to
keep everybody on the Earth from starving.... Including
myself and the author....
I'm especially fond of SimEarth. SimEarth is like a
goldfish bowl. I also have the actual goldfish bowl in
the *After Dark* Macintosh screen saver, but its charms
waned for me, possibly because the fish don't drive one
