Atari Research Labs-- those drug besotted hippies down there were a major piece of the story-- and up
Atari and a lot of other people had tried to compete against Sony and had failed in the process and here was a
Za'atar ! So what's your favorite use of za'atar , or your favorite recipe that uses za'atar -- which I know you have some probably
Za'atar .
the word ataraxia. How we can be less mentally disturbed, how we can find that peace of mind, that tranquility of thought. And the skeptics made quite a bold claim. They said that you
Seeing the Atari demo, which I'm sure everybody has seen.
We didn't have Atari.
First they did Atari, then they moved to Apple, and they did their 20 years at Apple, which when you think about it, must have been remarkable.
And in fact Atari was, for a time, the fastest growing and most drug infused company in the United States.
action figures and Atari cartridges.
across the screen uh Atari was formed I worked for Atari for uh three and a half
loaded so Atari had massive numbers of
representing a um Atari and um worked at
turn the Atari 2600, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sega Genesis, the Super Nintendo, the Nintendo 64, and familiarized yourself with most of their marquee titles.
game to Atari and while I was there my head was in this state of half awake and half asleep while Steve was
The two stoic concepts are apathea and ataraxia.
And as I was playing the Atari, I would wonder, what happens to those characters when I'm not logged in?
looks-- he looks like an Atari console or something.
and that was as a tech for Atari.
How about Al Alcorn of Atari?
Does anyone in this room remember Atari?
This is one example-- a classic 80s Atari arcade game called "Missile Command." I'm sure if anyone is familiar.
I thought it was like an Atari game or something.
and got a job at Atari fixing up games that they had designed in Grass Valley he would add things like sound to them
world popular, which were Atari games and from the '70s.
And I end up taking a job at Atari.
Eventually, after I leave Atari, I'm desperately trying to find the right role for me going forward.
So for instance, Atari invents game design.
And then when he went to work for Atari, he was such a filthy slob they made him come in at night.
to finance it we we just didn't have enough money Atari never had any money
the things that we tried to do at Atari and I think Google does too
on virtual reality to the guys down here at Atari when I was sitting in a conference room not many miles from here
last console was before this that was successful from American manufacturers Atari you right I would even been a long time since
that's what it would look like on the screen Atari lunar lander 1977 we
baby they're playing Kaboom it's my favorite Atari game at the time I love it
Heck on the screen I took it into Atari and they said we want to hire you they wanted to hire me right away and I said
when I saw a ball on one of these Atari games out on the factory floor and it was they only used black and white TV
Man'oushe za'atar or cheese man'oushe?
It's got tinned chickpeas, za'atar , and olive oil.
And of course, with the Atari, there weren't.
I mean, I came of age in the Atari 2600 era so that's more-- No way.
So do you think that maybe what didn't go well at Atari and some of the others were even just the content of the job?
I can still remember being in this office in Santa Monica-- this is at Atari-- with a ton of the programming guys who
personal computers, but a lot of people had Atari game machines, and this was basically a modem that turned their game machine into a two way device.
In their mind, they saw the Atari crash, the video game crash, resulting from not just a glut of bad products, but just a glut of too many products, of too many choices.
Up until that point, I think Atari have been very profitable in the '70s, and then Mattel and Coleco came along and that ruined the balance of power
Tomato paste, feta, and za'atar .
Now, my favorite spice is za'atar .
I do a whole roasted cauliflower with za'atar and lemon zest and garlic and honey and sumac that I
I can hear Hebrew from 1,000 miles away, and smell za'atar from-- this is, I don't think, a superpower, but it's just what it is.