Books

• John Markoff - What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
  

  A very West Coast, countercultural account of the development of computing and its percolation to the people. Gives a lot of background on how many of the pioneers had goals far grander than technical breakthroughs, focusing rather on augmenting the human condition.

  • Jaron Lanier's review of the book
    
  • Edward Hasbrouck's review of the book
    
• Steven Levy - Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
  

  The canonical history of the hacker community. Divided into three parts dealing with the MIT hackers (60s mostly), West Coast hardware hackers (70s) and game hackers (80s). Perhaps too exalted at times, but still fun to read.

Games

• Eliza
  

  More a visual novel than game. Centers around Evelyn, who used to work on therapeutic applications of AI for a large company. After a three-year break from her previous life she reemerges and tries to get a grip of her life again. Visually beautiful and meditative.

• Exapunks
  

  A hacking game set in the alternative 90s (what with the gray and red WinAmp-y interfaces). Provides an interesting and moody backstory of Moss, a former hacker/cracker battling with a neuro-degenerative disease known as the phage. Gameplay involves programming EXAs - tiny processes visualized as robots - in a simple machine language.

• Shenzhen I/O
  

  An electronics/assembly hacking game. An American expat in Shenzhen, China goes to work for Longteng Ltd. - an electronics company. The challenges consist of both hardware and software design. The programming model is a simple assembly language.

• Dunnet
  

  Text adventure written by Ron Schnell. Part of every instance of GNU/Emacs since forever. M-x dunnet. Interesting plot twist unfolds when…

• Hadean Lands
  

  Text adventure from IF legend Andrew Plotkin. An apprentice alchemist needs to survive after his alchemically-powered spaceship crashes on an alien planet. Paracelsus meets "Monday Starts on Saturday", meets Count Cagliostro, meets…

• MHRD
  

  Digital circuit design simulator. You're employed by a fictional company by the name of… Microhard. Your objective is to build steadily more complicated logical components using a very simple and intuitive hardware description language. Your efforts culminate in a design for a complete (albeit simple) CPU.

• Last Call BBS
  

  Described as Zachtronics' "love letter" to the early home computer era. Set in the environment of a fictional Sawayama Z5 computer (also known from Exapunks), it feels like actually using the system, complete with modem sounds and limited bandwidth. The BBS system from the title lets one download several games in the spirit of early days, including a logic-based dungeon puzzle, circuit simulator and biohacking. If not the most exciting of Zachtronics games, it certainly gives off a nice vibe.

Videos

Articles

• Zenclavier
  

  Musings on how interfaces get in the way of actually manipulating ideas. Taking Vim as the prime example of minimizing overhead, the author ponders the importance of getting "zenned out" easily.

• Establishment of First Military and Civilian Computing Centers in the USSR
  

  In Russian. An overview of how the Soviet computer industry came about and who the key figures were. Co-authored by Anatoly Kitov, one of the giants in the Soviet school of programming. If you'd like this to be translated to English, let me know.

Websites

• Lainzine
  

  Zine associated with Lainchan. All kinds of articles on programming, security, cryptography, cognition, art, politics, etc.

Operating Systems

Retrocomputing