How Early Computer Games Influenced Internet Culture
Virtual playspaces of the 1980s encouraged openness and creativity, which would later become foundational values of the web.
When I started at Google, I was surprised by how many engineers had played my games as kids and been inspired to pursue tech at a very early age. So the Apple II was definitely an accelerator of hacker culture.”
That same culture, and the premium it placed on openness, would eventually carry over to the early web: a platform that anyone could build on, that no one person or company could own. That idea is at the heart of what proponents for net neutrality are trying to protect—that is, the belief that openness is a central value, perhaps even the foundational value, of what is arguably the most important technology of our time.