Bring On the Bushnell!

It's official. "Architechts of Tomorrow, Volume 2" just went off to my editors at "CPU" magazine for their feedback and (hopefully) approval. Only a little bit of formatting left to go, and then almost 55,000 words of amazing, new interviews with a dozen of computing's brightest minds will be available for the ridiculously low price of 99 cents. More on that later.


For now, I leave you with this tidbit from Atari founder Nolan Bushnell:

CPU: I spent probably one-quarter of my grade school years connected to [an Atari] 2600. So being a parent and having seen an entire generation of kids like me intoxicated with consoles, do you feel there’s such a thing as excessive or counterproductive gaming?

Bushnell: Absolutely. In fact, there’s some pretty good evidence that excessive game play is not good for kids, but moderate game playing is extremely good for kids. You find kids are much better problem solvers. They’ve shown some actual jumps in measured IQ for game players. But if they start exceeding two hours a day, then you see a serious drop off in other knowledge acquisition. I think that it may in fact drop kids’ curiosity factors and their patience. I try very hard to limit my kids to two hours.

CPU: Do you succeed?

Bushnell: Intermittently.