In case you’ve never seen or heard our dear friend and guest writer Jer Thorp speak on stage, this is a simple must. His talk from TEDxVancouver last November is finally online. Jer talks about the summer of 1985, when his father came home with a classic Mac. Loaded on that machine was a revolutionary program called HyperCard, which for him (and thousands of others) opened a door to expressivity through programming. 

Jer’s post on CAN from September 2009 forms the basis of his recent talks, looking at the HyperCard history, a tool for making tools, once a legacy for Apple.

For those that do not know Jer, he is a generative software artist and educator from Vancouver, Canada, currently living in New York. A former geneticist, his work explores the boundaries between science, mathematics, and art using custom-written computer programs. Thorp is currently Data Artist-in-Residence at The New York Times, the first Artist-in-Residence at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) of NYU, and a contributing editor for Wired UK.