During a stomach flu last week I got sucked into
SHENZHEN I/O, a game of electronic logic puzzles solved by writing tiny convoluted programs in assembly. After days of playing it, well again but with MOV and NOP swimming before my eyes, I re-read bits of
AP2, an archive (and relic itself) of an Amiga games magazine (1991-96) and its writing culture: this led to reading issues of its idiosyncratic progenitor
Your Sinclair (1984-93), which led to finding
the Forth language (1968), which led to my staying up for hours last night reading its book, that starts with a dictionary but inexorably just
keeps thinking until you're using the switches on your computer to input your own compiler / OS / virtual machine.
Gee whiz. The energy of early computing. As if to make up for all the disappointments of actually using these computers, the texts sparkle, and every obstacle seem to hide a secret delight.
I read bits of the AD&D2 Dungeon Masters guide recently as well, and I think aspects of that game only make sense from this perspective as well: the game is in many ways about the DM concealing from the players what is possible, leaving them to puzzle and try things that generally fail hilariously, but sometimes in their success bring a sense of wonder.
Today you find game hints on the Internet, not in magazines employing witty writers, and you download programming languages instead of creating them yourself on punchcards. The notion of a story game where everything is hidden from the players seems a bit obtuse and uncollaborative. We hear now from many more voices, and from different voices as well: AP and YS were squarely aimed at well-off teenage boys, and the Forth book quietly insists you're not a good enough programmer, requiring replenishing reserves of confidence.
Plus, there's the fact that even among engineers today's technological advances are shadowed by our speculation on how it will be used to shore up drone-warfare and surveillance complexes. ("I realized how long it had been since I looked at a new technology with wonder, instead of an automatic feeling of dread." Maciej Cegłowski,
2014) I'm not sure of this, but I feel like it's much clearer now in national and global conversations that technical solutions must be combined with social ones than it was thirty or forty years ago. Even Facebook is sinister to even Americans, these days.
And so I'm looking for that secret delight of discovering the possible in life and politics. The sense of magic, the awe of abstraction, the energy of responsibility. Because of, not in spite of, the disappointments.