Table of Contents

* Prologue: Pirates Cove * Pong * Space Invaders * Experience Points * Extra Life * Atari * Dungeon * Super Users * Breaking In * Symbiosis * Cheese * Hide the Geek * Beyond Zork * Epilogue

About the Author

David S. Bennahum is a contributing editor for Wired, Spin, Ligua Franca, and I.D. magazine. He is also the publisher of MEME, and online newsletter on technology and culture. Readers can contact him by email at davidsol@panix.com and view his website at http://www.extralife.org/

Reviews

By seventh grade, Bennahum (now a contributing editor at Wired and Spin, among others) was well on his way to a life of petty crime, sexual experimentation, and escalating drug use. Fate intervened in the form of an Atari 800 computer with 48K of RAM‘a bar mitzvah present from his dad that opened Bennahum first to the world of (already beloved) video games and then on to computer programming and the alternate world of early cyberspace. While mercifully devoid of the exaggerated hype plaguing such books as Don Tapscott's Growing Up Digital (LJ 11/1/97), Extra Life does artfully describe Bennahum's experiences as a member of the first generation to grow up interacting naturally with computers. His description of finding himself standing in that "open field west of a big white house" will have his Generation X readers rushing to download a copy of Zork and relive some shared memories. Recommended for public libraries.‘Rachel Singer, Franklin Park P.L., IL

In this peculiar memoir of growing up at the same time as the computer, Bennahum, a contributing editor to Wired and other magazines, charts his lifelong obsession with the machine, from before he could type a four-line BASIC program to his days of amateur hacking to the time he took a trip to Microsoft's Seattle offices for a job interview. Implicitly challenging the distinction between geekiness and coolness, Bennahum tells of his early fascination with drugs, the solace he found in computers and the seductiveness of invading others' cyberprivacy. He writes as compellingly about the glee of his first hacking job as other memoirists have written about their first acid trip or incestuous relationship. Bennahum captures with poignancy the yearning he had to be a "Super User," the computer lab's star du jour, as well as the thrill of discovery when working with computers. But his memoir is marred by too many unexplained digressions, such as the all-too-casual suggestion that his sister became a "bad girl" because she didn't look for computers to rescue her. The book's largest bug lies in the fact that Bennahum spends too much time documenting when he should be enlightening. Must we really know that "Paul Haahr taught me how to play Ping-Pong with the switches," when we'd rather read his insights into such a moment? Those who grew up during the same pivotal cyber-time as the author will recognize at least some of his sentiments but find little new in them; those who didn't might assume that they didn't miss much. Author tour. (Nov.)