David S. Bennahum

mind to mind interviewer

In the beginning...

...I was five years old wandering around a hotel lobby in 1973.

Then suddenly...

...I saw this miraculous machine at the end of the bar. It had two knobs, a television screen, and a sort of cartoon running...but it wasn't a cartoon...it wasn't a television...it was... And all of a sudden I realized this thing called Pong was a kind of computer -- a machine I could play with -- a cartoon I could control.

And finally...

Twenty three years later I'm still playing with these dumb-genius machines, except now I'm also writing about the impact they've had on our lives. In the fall of 1997 my recollections of growing up with computers, titled _Coming of Age in Cyberspace_, will be published by Basic Books. I'm particularily fascinated by the human side of technology -- the intimate history of how people designed these tools, and how others hijacked them for unexpected, often thrilling uses.

If you're curious about the history of cyberspace, you can read first-hand accounts and join the conversation by subscribing to "Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace," which I moderate. Every other week I publish a newsletter, via email, on the intersection of people and technology, titled MEME (http://www.reach.com/matrix/meme.html), which you can also subscribe to. I write about similar issues for New York magazine, The New York Times, I.D., and Marketing Computers. I've also contributed pieces to Wired, The Economist, Lingua Franca, Spin and Harper's Bazaar. You can visit my home page.