Word: bennahum
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...computers and offered an alternative to a real life that was less than orderly. When his parents went through a divorce after a move to New York City, Mattel hand-held games like football and car racing and the popular memory-testing game "Simon" were outlets that let Bennahum "hide from the experience of seeing once-powerful adults falter." In his high school computer lab he explains how users there escaped to a virtual world free from, among other things, divorces, remarriages, and troubled siblings...
...Indeed, Bennahum describes how the social and familial element of computers took off in the early 1980s, a movement similar to how the Internet and email have revolutionized communication in the 1990s. Underground BBSes (bulletin board systems), which were most times run by people out of their homes, contained illegal software to download. The precious phone numbers of these BBSes were passed around among friends in a sort of Underground Railroad of computer users. His high school computer lab was a close-knit community where more experienced users shared their knowledge with younger users eager to soak up their expertise...
However, when the game spun hopelessly out of control, computers again arrived to rescue Bennahum. For his Bar Mitzvah, his dad promised him any gift if he would not invite the friends who got him into trouble. He followed his Dad's advice, and, moreover, he cut ties with them. Thus he received an Atari 800 with 48K of R.A.M. and a dual floppy disk drive. It was a turning point in his life: as his interest in computers grew throughout high school, his grades rose in direct proportion...
...book only drags in places where Bennahum describes the technical logic behind his beloved computers. While interesting, most of the information would go right over the heads of people unacquainted with the machines. Additionally, while information about his family and home life is plentiful early on in the book, later appearances are sporadic, and sometimes seem out of place in the flow of the story. His earlier years through high school are explained in great detail, and the book seems to hurry to a conclusion, glossing over college and his years after graduation...
...snapshot and a chronicle of the technological revolution of the 1980s, Extra Life does a magnificent job. In today's high-powered, electronically driven world, it's hard to fathom a time when a dual 5-1/2" floppy disk drive was a luxury. But Bennahum takes us back to the good old days of home technology, when a simple game with plumbers from Brooklyn captivated a nation and ushered in a new era of living. Game over? Not hardly, when there's always the opportunity for an extra life...