books, she just wrote these demented little poems with a quillpen and hid them in her desk, but they still fought their wayinto the world, and lasted on and on and on. It's damned hard toget rid of Emily Dickinson, she hangs on like a tick in a dog'sear. And everybody who writes from then on in some sense has tomeasure up to this woman. In the art of book-writing theclassics are still living competition, they tend to elevate theentire art-form by their persistent presence.

I've noticed though that computer game designers don't look muchto the past. All their idealized classics tend to be in reverse,they're projected into the future. When you're a game designerand you're waxing very creative and arty, you tend to measureyour work by stuff that doesn't exist yet. Like now we only havefloppies, but wait till we get CD-ROM. Like now we can't havecompelling lifelike artificial characters in the game, but waittill we get AI. Like now we waste time porting games betweenplatforms, but wait till there's just one standard. Like nowwe're just starting with huge multiplayer games, but wait tillthe modem networks are a happening thing. And I -- as a gamedesigner artiste -- it's my solemn duty to carry us that muchfarther forward toward the beckoning grail....

For a novelist like myself this is a completely alien paradigm.I can see that it's very seductive, but at the same time I can'thelp but see that the ground is crumbling under your feet. Everytime a platform vanishes it's like a little cultural apocalypse.And I can imagine a time when all the current platforms mightvanish, and then what the hell becomes of your entire mode ofexpression? Alan Kay -- he's a heavy guy, Alan Kay -- he saysthat computers may tend to shrink and vanish into theenvironment, into the walls and into clothing.... Sounds prettygood.... But this also means that all the joysticks vanish, all