June 22nd, 2023
In 1983 I had completely mastered the 6502 CPU. I knew every instruction and how long it took to execute by heart. I knew every trick for optimizing its performance. I even knew all the undocumented instructions — instruction codes that did useful things, but were not officially supported and so might not work on somebody’s computer.
I had also completely mastered the Atari Home Computers. I knew every detail of their chipset; I had the operating system down cold. That computer was a violin in my hands, and I could make beautiful music with it.
But times change and the Atari computers with their 6502 CPUs were superseded by more powerful computers such as the IBM PC and the Macintosh. So I threw away all my old expertise and began developing expertise in the Macintosh. It took me a year to get a grip on the Macintosh, and another year to become proficient with it. I had to learn the 68000 CPU, its instruction set, Pascal (the programming language required to program the Macintosh), and the radically new Macintosh operating system. Pascal was a fascist language, I complained; it greatly constrained my freedom of expression as a programmer. The Macintosh operating system was just as authoritarian. I was not permitted direct access to the display. Instead, I had to go through the arcane systems built into the Mac. Some of these, like QuickDraw, were certainly very helpful, but other aspects of the operating system were infuriatingly obtuse. Moreover, Apple kept improving the Mac’s operating system, forcing me to learn even more stuff. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that I felt confident programming the Mac. By then I had left Pascal behind and was using the C programming language, later shifting to C++, the object-oriented expansion of C.
I have continued learning new technical material: Java, the XML data format, Javascript, HTML, CSS, and lots of other junk. In the process, I’ve had to abandon the older material. Truly, I have forgotten more technology than many young programmers know today. It has been a long, strange road.
Obsolescence Strikes Closer to Home
But of late, I have been forced to realize that I must abandon another mass of expertise I have amassed over the years: my skill at lecturing.
I began learning public speaking as a freshman in high school. Here’s a photo of me receiving an award for winning a speech contest back then. Note the date.
I loved teaching and lecturing, so I volunteered to teach special projects groups while an undergraduate at UC Davis. In grad school, I served as a teaching assistant. The Physics Department had a library of astronomy movies, and so every Friday night I showed the movies and answered questions afterwards. I kept getting the same questions every Friday (“What’s a black hole?” “Is there life on other planets?” etc.), so I began delivering lectures on these subjects.
My lecture on black holes was particularly good. I started off slowly, explaining the balance inside every star between the gravitational force pulling everything towards the center of the star, and the thermal pressure generated by the thermonuclear reactions pushing outward. I explained how this was a dynamic equilibrium: as the star used up its supply of hydrogen fuel, the loss of outward-pushing energy would cause the star to contract, which would compress the gases, raising their temperatures, increasing the rate of thermonuclear reactions, causing more energy to be generated, raising the outward pressure, all in such a manner as to keep the star in balance. But, towards the end of a star’s life, the shortage of fuel is no longer sufficient to increase thermonuclear power output, so the star begins a final contraction.
I then launched into an oratorical bolero. I re-created that ending here for your enjoyment:
The shock on their faces was all the reward I needed.
I taught lower-division physics at a podunk community college in Nebraska for two years, then got a better job in California teaching high school kids about energy problems for the University of California. I learned a lot about showmanship doing that job:
Then I got a job at Atari as a game designer, so teaching became a hobby rather than a job. But I still taught whenever I could. I taught astronomy courses for University of California Extension. In the summer of 1980 I was asked by Atari Marketing to give a technical talk to the sales people about the Atari Home Computer System. The product had been on the market for nine months and the sales people all over the country were getting their butts kicked by the Apple II. Demoralization was creeping into the sales force. So I gave them a two-hour foot-stomping revival-meeting lecture showing them just how superior the Atari 800 was to the Apple II. At one point I argued that Apple IIs were for computer geeks, while Atari computers were for regular people. I drove home the point by swinging an Atari joystick by its cord, smashing it onto the table, plugging it into the computer, and using it successfully. “Products for consumers have to be built for consumers” is all I said. By the time I was done, they were raring to get out there and pick a fight with an Apple salesman.
I later delivered a series of two-day seminars all over the country teaching software developers how to use the special capabilities of the Atari computers. If I recall correctly, these were free to developers. Most were astounded by the capabilities of the machines. My rambunctious style breathed life into the presentations. A magazine story about my seminars said that they had all the energy of a Sunday revival meeting complete with me as the evangelist. I was, in truth, the first “software evangelist”; a few years later, Apple Computer picked up on the idea for its Macintosh and Guy Kawasaki became the world’s first offical software evangelist. He lacked my oratorical panache, but he more than made up for it in graciousness and business acumen.
After Atari collapsed, I didn’t have many opportunities to teach. So I made my own, founding the Journal of Computer Game Design in 1987 (I may have the year wrong), then founding the Computer Game Developers Conference in 1988. Every year I carefully prepared a lecture for that conference, and it was always rated as the best lecture of the conference. My “Dragon Speech” was the best I have ever given, and I rehearsed it dozens of times, as is obvious from the video. That created a reputation for me, and for the next 25 years I was invited to lecture all over the world. I put a lot of effort into those lectures and am proud of all of them. Lecturing gives me an emotional high.
End of an Era
But the times, they are a-changing. Three factors have convinced me that I must, alas, abandon lecturing.
Air Travel
I hate air travel. It’s a hassle that fails too often. Three times I have been stranded by airlines for reasons ultimately boiling down to their efforts to minimize costs. See, for example, this experience of mine. Once I was forced to cancel a lecture I had promised to deliver. Once I was stranded for four days. And then there was the time a volcano stranded me. Air travel has only grown worse in the last decade. I have no desire to subject myself to that crap any more.
Time Waste
A lecture in Europe requires me to dedicate a minimum of four days in order to deliver a one-hour lecture. Most of that time is spent in unproductive tasks: sitting on airplanes, in taxis, subways, and buses, dealing with hotels, getting through customs, and so on and on and on. I probably get a few hours of interaction with my hosts, which is always edfying. If I am willing to dedicate more time — typically, a week — then I get the opportunity for sightseeing. But I have seen a lot of the sights already.
I’m going to die someday, and I grow weaker by the day. Bodily ailments grow more taxing, work effectiveness declines. I cannot afford to expend scores of hours to deliver one hour of lecture. I must use my remaining time to maximum effect. I have so MUCH to teach people.
Alternative Technology
I would be willing to endure all this crap if it were the only way to teach. But alternatives are now available. I have used my essays on this website to record much of my thinking, but I am sad to say that literacy is not one of the strengths of the current generation. These people have eyes only for video. If I want to teach them, then that’s the medium I must use.
I have never been a fan of video as a teaching medium because almost all such video stinks to high heaven. I watch purported instructional videos on YouTube and they’re ghastly. I fail to grasp how a generation so hooked on video has never figured out how to make decent video. Some of them don’t even know how to hold a camera steady!
However, technology is making it easier to generate decent video — but only for those who are a) willing to make the effort and b) have an inkling of how to use video effectively. (Honestly, putting text into a video? What’s wrong with these nitwits?) I now organize my videos around Keynote, Apple’s Mac answer to Microsoft Powerpoint. I can do plenty of basic animations. I can make all the diagrams, graphs, and charts I need with OmniGraffle and Pixelmator Pro. And now, with Midjourney, I can build decent images. Here is an example of the quality that I can achieve with perhaps 12 hours of work.
So it’s time to move on. This time, it hurts; I immensely enjoyed lecturing. Most lectures and other oral presentations are crashing bores; most people deeply resent the time they waste sitting through these incompetent performances. But the excitement and appreciation they show when treated to a well-prepared lecture is a peak emotional experience for me, and I shall always regret the loss of that experience. I was so good at it...