Advent of Computing

Intel is one of the dominant forces in the computer industry today, they may be most well known for their line of microprocessors. These chips have powered computers going back to the early days of mi...

4 Nov 201929min

Colossal Cave Adventure is one of the most influential video games of all time. Originally written for the DEC PDP-10 mainframe in 1975 the game has not only spread to just about any computer out ther...

20 Okt 201928min

Computer viruses today pose a very real threat. However, it turns out that their origins are actually very non-threatening. Today, we are going to look at some of the first viruses. We will see how th...

6 Okt 201929min

Today I am joined by Julien Mailland and Kevon Driscoll, co-authors of Minitel: Welcome to the Internet and proprietors of the Minitel Research Lab(minitel.us). We talk about their book, how they firs...

29 Sep 201934min

Today we are dipping back into the deep and complex history of the proto-internet. We are going to be looking at Minitel, a France-Wide-Web that was built in the 1980s as a way to help the country sta...

22 Sep 201929min

Today we are going to be traveling back to the late 1970s to take a look at the early days of the home computer. And specifically how Microsoft found a foothold at just the right time and place. And f...

8 Sep 201932min

It really seems like in the last decade video games have gone from a somewhat niche hobby to a widespread part of our culture. Nowadays, there are a multitude of ways to get out gaming fix. Consoles, ...

25 Aug 201924min

In this mini-episode we look at the Jargon File, an early primary source about hacker culture. The most recent version of the file lives here: http://catb.org/jargon/html/ If you want more of my voice...

18 Aug 201910min