[chaimgingold]

Stefan Helmreich's book is indeed brilliant! I used it extensively when writing Building SimCity. Stefan was quite helpful in researching my book, sharing and checking some old SFI documentation so I could determine things like who visited SFI when for what event (and with whom).

The attendee list for some of the early Artificial Life conferences was quite cool. Peter Molyneux shows up as well as one of Maxis's venture capitalists.

[DonHopkins]

I was delighted how you covered Doreen Nelson's life work, Design Based Learning, like you did in your thesis. I have a copy of the "School Edition" Lab Pack of SimCity Classic that she and Michael Bremer wrote, which I'll dig up and scan, so I can put it on archive.org and include ìt with the open source Micropolis project.

LGR - SimCity Educational Version Unboxing & Overview: An overview of the "School Edition" Lab Pack of SimCity Classic by Maxis. Unboxing, first impressions of the package and testing of the radically rad software ensues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXRNtuAGTg

I was also thrilled you wrote about John von Neumann's 29 state self replicating cellular automata machine! Super interesting and important stuff.

I wrote more about that stuff in the discussion of SimCity for WebAssembly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40698110

Chaim, I'm looking forward to Will Wright interviewing you about Building SimCity, Fri Jul 19, 2024 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT. It will definitely be weird!

https://x.com/cgingold/status/1798790177814663294

>I thought it would be fun to turn the tables and give Will Wright a chance to interview someone else: me (!), about Building SimCity.

>@ROMchip_Journal: Mark your calendars! Next month, ROMchip is hosting @cgingold and Will Wright for a discussion of Gingold's new book BUILDING SIMCITY

>Event will broadcast live on Twitch Friday, July 19 @ 2PM EST. Grab your free tickets for the oneline interview:

here: https://app.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehis...

[chaimgingold]

Thanks, Don! Please scan that!

She recently found a shrink wrapped copy of a teacher guide she coauthored with Michael Bremer and opened it (!) because we disagreed about what was in there, LOL. It's destined now for her UCLA archive. Apparently she also wrote guides for many other Maxis titles but not all saw the light of day. Or maybe they did but need to be recovered.

[szvsw]

Hey thanks for the response. I’m looking forward to picking up the book now. Silicon Second Nature left a big enough impression on me that I did a performance art piece inspired by it in undergrad (back when I thought I might be an artist, LOL)… unfortunately I don’t have access any longer to video documentation but there are some pics and description on my (currently offline) website:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210802234726/https://samwolk.i...

There’s also a short 16mm experimental film I made around the same time:

https://vimeo.com/198901474

Just sharing since it’s pretty rare for me to meet someone who might actually be interested in these, ha!

[chaimgingold]

Your film has some beautiful stuff in it!