Ancient Logic

Way back in the 80s I'd treasure the few moments I could convince my parents to drive the 15 minutes or so to the local bookstore so I could slip to the back, find the science fiction section and read a few RPGs in the half hour or so it took them to circumnavigate our very small, very sad mall. One of the games I looked for was Cyberspace, which had an 80's awesome cover, truly inexplicable rules, and a courageously specific future-setting. Last night, my good friend  +Alex LaHurreau  found a nearly mint copy of this classic RPG in a Worcester used book store. The feelings came in waves. The cover is every bit as epic as I remember but the true gift was flipping through the timeline the creators put on nearly every page. I've included a few below. The predictions range from comical to poignant. Having hacked a few RPGs myself, I don't post this in the spirit of mockery but in a legitimate sense of awe. I remember reading these pages with absolute credulity and ...

Stumbled across this game engine during my post-work surfing. Essentially this is a special relativity modeler, slowing down the virtual speed of light so some of the stranger, more paradoxical effects are visible in real time. There's an element of this video that verges on the 'ooh, trippy lights,' category of game demos, but I like the alternate perspective on science it offers.

For a night, I got to join the Resistance. My friends have been playing Ingress, the augmented reality game Google launched a few months ago, nearly non-stop. As more and more of their time and attention bends towards a game that plays like a mash-up of capture the flag and geo-caching, I've become interested in the issues the game raises. And more than a little jealous that I went with an iPhone 4S in my last upgrade. But whatever. Our raid last night began the way any clandestine effort does, a covert marshelling of forces at a local safe house, in this case the apartment of one of my friends. Two smartphones fully charged and stocked with a supply of virtual munitions, +Morgan Rushing   and +Matthew McComb   set out onto the streets of Somerville, brazenly walking up to a quartet of portals (two Zipcar lots and a pair of local landmarks) and hacked them, flipping them from green 'Enlightened' control to the blue of the 'Resistance.' These factions h...

My friend Matt has recently become interested in the Google Augmented Reality game Ingress. I knew about as much as anyone else does by virtue of the promotional video: But apparently there's a lot more to it. At the moment the game is in alpha, which in typical Google SOP means you have to get an invite to play the game. Atypically, acquiring an invite is less about finding someone you know who has it (ala Google+) and more like passing an audition. Basically, you can wait at one of the metered portals for an invite or send a cool picture, tagged with "Ingress" or one of the other popular hashtags for the game. This is my friends work: https://plus.google.com/101002632394819121609/posts/XxQHHo6HEeQ So it appears he was successful, nice work! The actual play clips I've seen make it seem like a combination of geo-caching and Layers and also a bit of a road hazard, but still...very interesting. Seriously I'd check out all four of the links below, t...