Jimmy Maher's "The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga."
Reading/Discussion Schedule:
September 1-30: Chapters 1, 2, and 3 discussion* in this thread
--September 30, 8:30pm EST: Group IRC Chat (in Racketboy IRC channel)
October 1-28: Chapters 4, 5, and 6 discussion* in this thread
--October 28, 8:30pm EST: Group IRC Chat (in Racketboy IRC channel)
October 28-November 30: Chapters 7, 8, and 9 discussion* in this thread
--November 25, 8:30pm EST: Group IRC Chat (in Racketboy IRC channel)
--Late November (hopefully): Skype chat/podcast recording with the group members...and hopefully the author
*PLEASE use SPOILER tags for any in-thread discussion of parts of the book that haven't yet been read in the scheduled time.
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Book Details
I chose this book for two basic reasons.
1) I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the "Platform Studies" series, Racing the Beam. After reading that book and learning the planned focus and writing style of future books in the series, I very much wanted to read another entry. There's also a book about the Wii, for folks looking to check out the whole series.
2) I know little to nothing about the Amiga, and it has been my experience that this is true for most of the board. It's a blind spot in my retro-gaming knowledge. This book should be an excellent way to bring us up to speed and give us a new appreciation for an under-appreciated platform.
Description (from Amazon):
Long ago, in 1985, personal computers came in two general categories: the friendly, childish game machine used for fun (exemplified by Atari and Commodore products); and the boring, beige adult box used for business (exemplified by products from IBM). The game machines became fascinating technical and artistic platforms that were of limited real-world utility. The IBM products were all utility, with little emphasis on aesthetics and no emphasis on fun. Into this bifurcated computing environment came the Commodore Amiga 1000. This personal computer featured a palette of 4,096 colors, unprecedented animation capabilities, four-channel stereo sound, the capacity to run multiple applications simultaneously, a graphical user interface, and powerful processing potential. It was, Jimmy Maher writes in The Future Was Here, the world's first true multimedia personal computer. Maher argues that the Amiga's capacity to store and display color photographs, manipulate video (giving amateurs access to professional tools), and use recordings of real-world sound were the seeds of the digital media future: digital cameras, Photoshop, MP3 players, and even YouTube, Flickr, and the blogosphere. He examines different facets of the platform--from Deluxe Paint to AmigaOS to Cinemaware--in each chapter, creating a portrait of the platform and the communities of practice that surrounded it. Of course, Maher acknowledges, the Amiga was not perfect: the DOS component of the operating systems was clunky and ill-matched, for example, and crashes often accompanied multitasking attempts. And Commodore went bankrupt in 1994. But for a few years, the Amiga's technical qualities were harnessed by engineers, programmers, artists, and others to push back boundaries and transform the culture of computing.
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Want to Play Along?
If you want to try out some Amiga games while you read the book (you most likely will), check out this excellent primer and guide, which includes suggestions for hardware purchasing, games to play, and links to legal emulation: viewtopic.php?f=52&t=36399
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Places to order the book:
-Amazon (hardcover and Kindle editions)
-Barnes and Noble (hardcover and Nook editions)
-Play.com (hardcover, Europe)
-please submit any more!
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Other interesting links:
Author's Materials to Accompany Book
MIT Press Podcast interview with Jimmy Maher
History of the Amiga(this has five parts, none of which are linked to one another as best I can tell - you will have to search to find parts 2-5...)
-please submit more!
