Word: virtually
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...1960s and early '70s, the first generation of hackers emerged in university computer-science departments. They transformed mainframes into virtual personal computers, using a technique called time sharing that provided widespread access to computers. Then in the late '70s, the second generation invented and manufactured the personal computer. These nonacademic hackers were hard-core counterculture types -- like Steve Jobs, a Beatle- haired hippie who had dropped out of Reed College, and Steve Wozniak, a Hewlett-Packard engineer. Before their success with Apple, both Steves developed and sold ``blue boxes,'' outlaw devices for making free telephone calls. Their contemporary and early...
...anyone who wants them. Of course, not everyone on the electronic frontier identifies with the countercultural roots of the '60s. One would hardly call Nicholas Negroponte, the patrician head of M.I.T.'s Media Lab, or Microsoft magnate Bill Gates ``hippies.'' Yet creative forces continue to emanate from that period. Virtual reality -- computerized sensory immersion -- was named, largely inspired and partly equipped by Jaron Lanier, who grew up under a geodesic dome in New Mexico, once played clarinet in the New York City subway and still sports dreadlocks halfway down his back. The latest generation of supercomputers, utilizing massive parallel processing...
Writing Home gives the reader a sporting chance at understanding Bennett; it is as close to an autobiography as this gentleman is likely to vouchsafe. And in its evocations of Bennett's early years, it offers a virtual oratorio of embarrassment. His father, the butcher, played double bass in a jazz band and produced herb beer at home but succeeded at neither. His prim "Mam" made a religion of getting along; eventually she retreated into what Bennett calls "her flat, unmemoried days," like a meeker George III. Young Alan sought glamour in Leeds' double-decker trams, musty mystery...
...Brady Bunch Movie" abounds in cheap jokes capitalizing on the camp value of a plastic 70s sitcom family living in 90s culture. There isn't anything quite like Marcia Brady. (Christine Taylor, Maureen McCormick's virtual double) in a pink (you guessed it) polyester dress and matching handbag promenading through her high school. Grunge boys gawk at her and a Ricki Lake look-alike lesbian (Alanna Ubach) fawns over her. One boy says, "Marcia Brady's harder to get into than a Pearl Jam concert." The over-the-top acting of the Brady family members (and Alice, too) saves...
Scribble, the narrator, and his gang of no-goods are seriously messing with "vurt," or virtual reality. Hallucinatory interactive dramas are encoded in synthetic feathers, and a person can waft away from everyday life by brushing the back of his throat with a feather tip. Fantasies range from harmless, biff-bam adventures through warm-and-fuzzy childhood memories, to varieties of porn, and on to malign alternate worlds that appear to be not just virtual but actual, and that permanently suck in vurt addicts...