After reading "Offline", review "1024"

Let’s first look at a clip recorded in Digital Utopia:

In 1972, Brand and Rolling Stone photographer Annie Liebowitz sneaked into Stanford University's artificial intelligence laboratory, gathered a group of programmers and researchers, and held an "Interstellar Space War Olympics." Graduate students with long hair gathered around a PDP-10 time-sharing computer, typing commands to build small triangular spaceships on the computer screen and bomb each other. Brand not only recorded these program instructions in his story, but also described the excitement and joy of these players. He immediately used these joys as a testament to the power of the counterculture, the space war game, the computer, and the cultural atmosphere of freedom and cooperation around them.

However, when faced with new things like electronic games, the Chinese people’s attitude is first fear and suppression, which is “electronic heroin” and “the war on Internet addiction”. But fear and suppression cannot invent personal computers and the Internet. The creation of games such as “Space Wars” and “Life” relies on a more open and inclusive cultural atmosphere and social attitude, so they will be told as the legendary stories of hackers written by Steven Levy.
The cultural connotation that the "Offline" series wants to uphold should be the technological concept that "1024" failed to fully express.

Today’s gaming industry encompasses almost everything. In 1975, when Woz used 45 chips to make the Breakout game for Steve Jobs, “making games was barely a job”; but today, even playing games can be considered a popular profession. The historical and cultural heritage of this industry is outlined in a few articles in the “Starting the Game” section: starting with an excerpt from “Finite and Infinite Games”, from Sims “God” Will Wright to the perfect Pac-Man player, from Nintendo’s console battlefield to the evolution of controller design, and of course the game spirit and game failure theory in the eyes of researchers.

Then I have to say that the arrangement and design of the two illustrations of the game controller are quite good. The posters and postcards are definitely worth the price of the book^.^

The starting point of arcade games was Pong in 1972. Pac-Man was an arcade game released by Namco in 1980. It was not until July 3, 1999 that Billy Mitchell achieved a perfect record of 3333360 points. Perfection is based on the strict requirements for details, "focused practice" and self-polishing, and the complete analysis and mastery of the game form, programming rules and their purposes. Billy said this can be regarded as a metaphor for his life - "Pac-Man changed the tone of my life, including my career, family, emotions and everything. Since creating the perfect record of this game, I have become demanding of perfection in everything."
Or this "demand for perfection" is the same in games and life, which reminds me of the craftsman spirit, or "craftsmanship" in work. The sushi god Jiro Ono said in his "Sushi Tasting Encyclopedia" that "Master chefs are also professionals. For professionals, the most important thing is skills. Without skills, even if you devote yourself wholeheartedly, it is not feasible. In other words, you need to turn the skills that are constantly accumulated into "care" for customers." As Shunryu Suzuki taught us in "The Zen Master's Beginner's Mind", "When we can put our body and mind in the right place, everything else will follow."
From this, we can understand the "Escape List" in the "Tools" section. Technology and tools can be a burden in life, or a scene like "Coconut Day" in Kara's diary. The key is how to use your hands to participate in the world around you in a meaningful way, just like those Alpha Makers. Whether in Rarotonga or in Los Angeles, the most fundamental humanity in technology is our own life. Here, as Shunryu Suzuki said, "It is more important to make you yourself through the right practice."

Unfortunately, "Start Gaming" mainly focuses on arcade and console games, which may seem a bit outdated to current PC and online gamers. Of course, the topic of PC games and e-sports is enough to be discussed in a whole special topic: John Carmack, the graphics card revolution, id Software, Blizzard, Vavle, Voodoo, Oculus Rift... In terms of e-sports, there are QuakeCon, WCG, and this year's DOTA2 crowdfunding of up to 10.93 million US dollars in prize pools, as well as research projects on virtual economics and sociology in World of Warcraft, etc. Of course, this kind of culture should indeed be something that can be left after a long period of sedimentation.
In addition, there are two stories used at the beginning of "Searching for the Spirit of the Game". "World of Warcraft" is a world of swords and magic like "Dungeons and Dragons". Strictly speaking, the world background should be compared with the medieval Europe like "Lord of the Rings" and "A Song of Ice and Fire". The simple analogy with primitive humans feels a bit forced, after all, there are also science fiction games such as EVE and Mass Effect. Breaking the "addiction theory" is a good idea, but if you delve into the game behavior itself, it is more intuitive to start from the perspective of economic principles, game theory, and psychology to explain human behavior. From the perspective of players, game behavior is well-known "Play for fun. Play for uber." From the perspective of designers, it is to play God and create a perfect world. To fully explore the "people in the game", Huizinga's book does not analyze these two aspects in detail. As the article says, this is due to the limitations of the times, so starting from the framework of the information age should be easier for people to read.

Finally, after reading this book, I felt that I was still not satisfied. This may be because there are too many game-related topics. I hope that there will be another book on game topics in the future. In addition, from "1024" to "Offline", I began to see a path to the entire field of science and technology culture in the Chinese world: like the original "Wired" magazine and "Global Overview", to bring a feast of science and technology and humanities to Chinese readers. This is also my ultimate expectation for a MOOK with this theme. Of course, translating and editing these contents are hard work. In response to such an expectation, I would like to add a few words about my understanding of content organization.
In the special topic section, in addition to GEEK topics, the various subsystem structures of current social civilization - communication, energy, transportation, construction, commerce, education... The technology and humanities in these social systems are also worthy of our attention, especially how to embody the concept of "people", such as university education. After all, only by deeply decoding the technology and humanities in them can we have the foundation to program a better future.
In terms of heritage, it is a pity that the "Extended Reading" of "Global Overview" in "1024" was abandoned in "Offline" this time. In fact, there is a great distance between Chinese readers and the original authors. Providing some appropriate background materials to offset this sense of distance is still very effective. As a fan, this is definitely a rare learning material; from the perspective of developers, the reasonable use of such materials can also make future e-books, apps or websites very attractive.
The Frontier and SALT parts were also cancelled this time, perhaps because the content of SALT was too theoretical.
As for tools, the gadgets in 1024 were replaced with stories about escaping from modern society and Burning Man tents, which really felt closer to humanities. The tools were referenced by Global Overview and Cool Tools, which returned to personal power and lifestyle, and the effect was very real. And the aspect of "craftsmanship" is something I think we can seriously consider.
As for the writing part, programmers will probably be very familiar with the structure of this article, and it is also very literary.
The slow reading part is originally a topic of life. I believe that if the tool part is based on craftsmanship, the slow reading should be easier to display in life.

To sum up, the efforts and improvements made in this book deserve recognition, and I hope you will continue to work hard!

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.