Jason Scott (director/creator of the BBS documentary) reminiscences about the computer camp he went to as a 13 year old. I went to computer camp, but it was computer day camp and it was nothing like that. I think I was younger. For some reason I think it was at the town hall. I’m not sure. What I remember is that the computers had tape drives. Like, real tape drives, that looked like one of those 1980s square black tape recorder machines with keys on the front, only they were white. After you typed RUN PROGRAM it would say PRESS PLAY ON TAPE. So you would, and the program would run. For some reason that comes back to me a lot at odd times. Just that sentence. PRESS PLAY ON TAPE.

In Jason Scott’s reminiscence, he introduces a term: intelligence fog.

“I thought I was smart and then found out, watching the other kids in action, that I was actually the keeper of a sort of intelligence fog, a general sense of understanding things well but with no focus.”

That sounds about right.

In related news, today myself and my partner presented our ant-trail model along with the other groups in my agent-based modeling class. That’s my first agent-based model, and I believe our class was the first to be held in the exciting new CSCS computer lab, which has only just been made habitable for humans and computers and agent-based ants alike. Cool.