even try to hide the sordid truth from a crowd thisperspicacious.... You see, six months ago I was in Austria atthis Electronic Arts Festival, which was a situation almost asunlikely as this one, and my wife Nancy and I are sitting therewith William Gibson and Deb Gibson feeling very cool and ratherjetlagged and crispy around the edges, and in walks this*woman.* Out of nowhere. Like J. Random Attractive Redhead,right. And she sits down with her coffeecup right at our table.And we peer at each other's namebadges, right, like, *who isthis person.* And her name is Brenda Laurel.

So what do I say? I say to this total stranger, I say. "Hey. Areyou the Brenda Laurel who did that book on *the art of thecomputer-human interface*? You *are*? Wow, I loved that book."And yes -- that's why I'm here as your guest speaker tonight,ladies and gentleman. It's because I can think fast on my feet.It's because I'm the kind of author who likes to hang out inAdolf Hitler's home town with the High Priestess of Weird.

So ladies and gentlemen unfortunately I can't successfullypretend that I know much about your profession. I mean actuallyI do know a *few* things about your profession.... For instance,I was on the far side of the Great Crash of 1984. I was one ofthe civilian crashees, meaning that was about when I gave uptwitch games. That was when I gave up my Atari 800. As to why myAtari 800 became a boat-anchor I'm still not sure.... It wasquite mysterious when it happened, it was inexplicable, kind oflike the passing of a pestilence or the waning of the moon. If Iunderstood this phenomenon I think I would really have my teethset into something profound and vitally interesting... Like, myAtari still works today, I still own it. Why don't I get it outof its box and fire up a few cartridges? Nothing physicalpreventing me. Just some subtle but intense sense of revulsion.Almost like a Sartrean nausea. Why this should be attached to a