History: June 2004 Archive Page

The reason most pre-1940 musicals are unrevivable is that their books tend to be both slapdash in literary quality and fanciful to the point of absurdity. It was only in the late 30’s that the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart began to emphasize dramatic plausibility, most notably in Pal Joey (1940). And it was not until Rodgers joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II in 1943 to write Oklahoma! that the "book show," whose songs are integrated into a more or less realistic plot, became the norm. --Terry Teachout --Is the Musical Comedy Dead?  (Commentary Magazine)

I'd make a comment, but I can hear the pit orchestra is gearing up for a big dance number, so I'd better go.

Retro video gaming has become something of a pop culture phenomenon lately, with video game music and themes featured in television commercials for Hummer and Saturn sport utility vehicles. A top 20 R&B hit, "Game Over (Flip)" by Lil' Flip features sound effects from "Pac-Man."

It's not just nostalgia that's fueling retro video interest, says O'Hara. He thinks the old games were simply more fun to play: "There's a phrase that's used a lot in marketing - 'easy to learn, hard to master' - that describes most classic video games." --Michael Felberbaum --Classic Video Games Make a Comeback (AP|MyWay)

Today Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some areas a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics and family gatherings. It is a time for reflection and rejoicing. It is a time for assessment, self-improvement and for planning the future. --Juneteenth

Happy Juneteenth.

What If... There Were No IF? An Alternative History of Games, sans Crowther's Colossal Cave (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

During a break in the Princeton video game conference a few months ago, David Thomas asked me, what would computer games be like today if Will Crowther hadn't created Colossal Cave Adventure? I pulled Nick Montfort into the brief discussion that followed, but then the next panel started, and the topic went onto the back burner.

Here is a possible alternative history of computer game design, based on the premise that Will Crowther never wrote his 1975 original.

For want of Adventure, the magic word XYZZY is lost. (Computer users around the world are forced to think of less-guessable passwords, and information technology is more secure.)

For want of Adventure, Zork was lost. (But now everyone uses a really cool spreadsheet called VisiCalc.)

For want of Zork, Roberta Williams does not create "The Mystery House."

For want of Adventure, Adventure International was lost.

For want of Adventure International, Ken Williams does not work briefly for Scott Adams.

For want of Ken and Roberta Williams, Sierra was lost. (A generation of youngsters don't bother nagging their parents to upgrade their video cards from CGA to SuperVGA; when an explosion at a factory in Japan cripples the world's supply of memory chips, about six people notice.)

For want of Sierra Online, Leisure Suit Larry was lost.

For want of Leisure Suit Larry, Grand Theft Auto was lost.

For want of Grand Theft Auto, Grand Text Auto was lost. (The creators choose the name "Rogues' Gallery" instead, because it got more votes than "The Pong Throng" or "VisiCalc User Forum.")

For want of the text adventure genre, the entire field of computer science seems lifeless and boring to a significant number of young men and women who briefly consider it in the late 70s and early 80s. They drop out in droves. The ones who don't end up running computers at financial institutions, but are eventually put out of work by high-school dropouts using VisiCalc.

For want of the text adventure genre, the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre is lost.

For want of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, scholars groping for a way to describe hypertext to their non-technical colleagues think harder and come up with a better metaphor, one which magically prevents the premature dismissal of hyperfiction, leading to its rapid acceptance into the literary canon.

For want of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, a generation of youths watches more TV. Later, in college, these youths daydream during their hyperfiction survey courses, wondering how their life would have turned out if they had dropped out of high school like their stoner friends did.

Oh, and Dave Thomas has a scar, Nick Montfort has a beard, side-scrollers all scroll the opposite way, and all ships have funky spikes on their warp drive nacelles.

A bit more seriously, now...

I've read many anecdotes from programmers whose early experience with interactive fiction games turned them on to computers, so I do think that without text adventures, some of these people might not have considered careers in computing. While it's a meme that Adventure set the field of computer science back two weeks, I'd prefer to think that after everyone finished Zork, they went back to their jobs energized by what computers might be able to accomplish, and perhaps they shifted their expectations in such a way that might have affected the development of CS in positive ways.

Since the average computer user didn't have access to CRTs that displayed fancy graphics, and since a significant chunk of computing took place on printer terminals, I suppose that ASCII genres such as Rogue, and strategy games such as Wumpus and mainframe Trek would have attracted the attention of the amateur hackers and students who, after playing Adventure or Zork, tried their hand at creating their own amateur interactive fiction.

Hosting the wild speculation up to the next level...

Perhaps the players who lost countless hours playing interactive fiction would have instead spent more time getting their game fix at the arcade. If coin-op video arcade games developed a little faster, then perhaps users of personal computers wouldn't have been at all satisfied with the bleeps and blips that they saw on their home computers... maybe they would have been so disappointed by the offerings of home computer entertainment that they would have preferred dropping coins in the arcade, playing games that emulated familiar TV shows (however badly), to typing in lines of code from magazines in order to play games on their home computers. This might have delayed growth in the market for PC games, paving the way in the future for a direct transition of loyalty from the video arcade to the gaming platform.

The 363-foot-long behemoth has lain on its side in front of JSC since 1977, a favorite sight of tourists, but also a victim of the elements. --Apollo moon rocket to get face-lift (CNN)

The Houston Space Center was one of the places I visited on my honeymoon (10 years ago next month). If I recall correctly, there was a shuttle mission in progress. Very cool!

An atheist's attempt to remove the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance failed on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court avoided the constitutional question and ruled he could not bring the challenge on behalf of his daughter.... The ruling came on Flag Day and on the 50th anniversary of the addition of the words "under God" to the pledge. The U.S. Congress adopted the June 14, 1954, law in an effort to distinguish America's religious values and heritage from those of communism, which is atheistic. --Top Court Rejects Atheist's Challenge to Pledge (Reuters|MyWay)

Several thousand Dubliners, tourists and literary experts filled the capital's major boulevard Sunday to celebrate the fictional anniversary of "Ulysses," James Joyce's famously complex epic set on a single Dublin day 100 years ago.
--Thousands in Dublin celebrate 'Ulysses' (AP|Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

June 16, 2004 is Bloomsday. The mad cow disease scare means the thousands re-creating Leopold Bloom's breakfast of "grilled mutton kidneys" had to do without. Quote of the day: "It's awfully hard to serve offal at all."

The Sound and the Fury. 75 years ago, William Faulkner finished his fourth novel. It was published later in the fall (October 7, 1929), and for the first fifteen years sales totaled just over 3,300 copies (an appendix was added in 1946, when most of Faulkner's books were out of print. Of course, a few years after that he was awarded the Nobel Prize). It was Faulkner's own favorite novel, primarily, he said, because he considered it his "most splendid failure".

--The Sound and the Fury [at 75] (Metafilter)

When I finished reading this book as an undergraduate, I immediately re-read the chapters in chronological order. I've got an XML version of the "Benjy" chapter, and had a graduate student mark up the dialogue and the multiple timeframes, and I created a few simple utilities to sort and sift through the text on those criteria. Maybe someday I'll do something with it, but thanks to the unholy alliance between Disney and Sonny Bono the text is still protected by copyright.

Men and papers who had opposed his policy and vilified him personally, now vied with his adherents and friends in lauding the rare wisdom and goodness which marked his conduct and character. --The Death of Lincoln (Harper's)

From an 1865 article.

Huckleberry Finn opens with a warning from its author that misinterpreting readers will be shot. Despite the danger, readers have been approaching the novel from such diverse critical perspectives for 120 years that it is both commonly taught and frequently banned, for a variety of reasons. Studying both the novel and its critics with an emphasis on cultural context will help students develop analytical tools essential for navigating this work and other American controversies. This lesson asks students to combine internet historical research with critical reading. Then students will produce several writing assignments exploring what readers see in Huckleberry Finn and why they see it that way. --Critical Ways of Seeing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Context (EdSiteMent | NEH)

I've taught Huck Finn numerous times... when I mentioned it during the job interview that led to my present position, one of my colleagues expressed surprise that I teach this risky book.

That colleague accepted another position over the summer, so I never did have a full-length conversation with her over the subject.

From an excellent collection of curricular resources. Blogging it in honor of Jason Rhody's new position with the NEH (and new URL for his Miscellany is the Largest Category).

The York Corpus Christi Cycle, a collection of brief plays that together tell Biblical history from Creation to Doomsday, was the most complex of the medieval mystery cycles. The surviving manuscript of 48 plays (with a combined length four times that of the longest Hamlet text) and the civic and guild records of the town of York give us much information on the nature of those productions, which took place annually on the feast of Corpus Christi from the late 14th century to the early 16th century. The scholarly debate over how the plays were performed has settled down in favor of what had been the traditional view -- that each short play, mounted on an individual stage-wagon, was pulled through the streets of York, stopping to perform for audiences that had gathered at predetermined "stations" along the route. --Dennis G. Jerz --The Staging of the York Corpus Christi Plays (PSim: York Corpus Christi Pageant Simulator)

This article is getting musty, but I like trotting it out as the Feast of Corpus Christi nears.

I update the home page fairly regularly, considering I did the programming 10 years ago (during the summer before my wedding) and got the article published 7 years ago. (Egad, what a horrid background image I used...)

In a comedy of errors, Dasch proceeded to call the New York office of the FBI to explain that he was a German citizen who had arrived in the U.S. the previous morning, that he had a statement to make about the nation’s security, and that he wanted to meet with J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI desk agent duly noted the call in his log but decided it was not worthy of action. Not until several days later, when Dasch traveled to Washington, checked in at the Mayflower hotel, and called Hoover’s office directly, did the FBI "crack" the case.

With his usual flair for publicity, Hoover held a dramatic press conference emphasizing the FBI’s ingenuity and skill in bringing the German agents to book. --Jacob Heilbrunn reviews Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America by Michael Dobbs
--Plodders Plot (Commentary Magazine)

A history of videogames, just as a history of any software "type" or "genre," will reveal an open-source origin and a legacy of "borrowers" and "derivers" hoping to capitalize on what was originally free, whether through buying up copyrights or creating enhanced commercial versions. With an increase in the size of a software corporation comes a decrease in the level of innovation one finds there, until finally, in 2004, gamers are confronted at the videogame store with hordes of cloned videogames and programmers are threatened at the courtroom by battalions of lawyers frantically protecting someone's "intellectual property." The protection that intellectual property law affords software developers is possible only by seizing the rights of the users of that software, even those who legitimately purchase it. As corporate lawyers, CEOs, and investors further entrench themselves in the software market, gamers and programmers will find themselves in the same dismal position as the ship in a game of Space Invaders. --Matt Barton
--The Videogame in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Armchair Arcade)

I left a few (unrelated) comments on Tetris, Galileo, and the open source philosophy on the Armchair Arcade site.