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Documentary Pick: 'Two American Families,' from Frontline

In case you missed it last night, here’s Frontline’s “Two American Families,” which tracked two families in Milwaukee over two decades. 

Playlist: 5 Pioneering Computer Demos, featuring MIT, Stanford and Xerox

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Mark Armstrong is the founder of Longreads and editorial director for Pocket

Last week we lost a pioneer of early computing, Doug Engelbart, and Tom Foremski has an excellent short backstory about the inventor of the mouse. It was Engelbart’s 1968 demo of computer graphical user interfaces that inspired everything we now use today—yet despite his many accomplishments Engelbart struggled in later years to get attention or funding for his work.

Now seems like an appropriate time to look back at some of the early computer demos, and for further reading, check out “Creation Myth,” Malcolm Gladwell’s 2011 New Yorker story on the work of Engelbart, Xerox PARC and Apple.

1. The Early Days of ‘Cloud Computing’ at MIT, 1963 (28 min.)

This is a 1963 interview with professor Fernando J. Corbato at the MIT Computation Center, where he explains the concept of “timesharing,” which they developed to allow teams to work on individual consoles that attach to one centralized computer.

For more from MIT, check out this 1963 demonstration of “sketchpad” software developed by Ivan Sutherland.

2. Hewlett-Packard’s First Personal Computer, 1968 (21 minutes)

Marketing brochures proclaimed that HP’s 9100A was “more than a calculator—it’s really a desk-top computer!” The cost: $4,900. Read more on how the Model 9100A was developed.

3. Doug Engelbart, Stanford Research Institute, 1968 (1 hr., 15 min.)

This two-hour demo from Engelbart, who founded SRI’s Augmentation Research Center, not only introduces the mouse, but also everything from the graphical user interface to hyperlinking, cutting-and-pasting and collaborative editing.

4. Early Digital Teleconferencing, University of Southern California, 1978 (6 min.)

USC’s Informational Sciences Institute produced this filmed demonstration of early digital teleconferencing technology over ARPAnet, complete with guy-who-nearly-misses-the-call-because-he-was-yachting.

5. Xerox Star User Interface, 1982

It was Xerox PARC where Steve Jobs saw the future for Apple, when he visited and got a demo of the Alto personal computer. Xerox released its Star Professional Workstation in 1981, and this clip features Star designers Charles Irby and David Canfield-Smith explaining how the system worked.

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Image via dougengelbart.org

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Reading List: Sunrise, Sunset

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Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps.

A few weeks ago, I was reading my weekly horoscope, courtesy of The Rumblr’s Madame Clairvoyant. The last three words of Leo’s outlook caught in my mind: “Don’t even worry.”

“Don’t even worry,” I whispered over and over. So many people have told me not to worry about the future in one breath, only to interrogate me about my future plans in the next. “Don’t even worry,” I say to myself. These are pieces that make me feel hopeful about the future — not in the naive hope that it will be easy, but with calm assurance that good things will happen to mediate the bad.

1. “The ‘Handicap Icon’ Gets New Life.” (Jennifer Grant, Christianity Today, June 2013)

A philosophy professor and an artist collaborated to create a “symbol of access,” angered by the stigma and ignorance directed toward differently abled citizens.

2. “The Empty-Nest Yard Sale.” (Kevin Sampsell, The Rumpus, June 2013)

Sampsell, a bookseller and independent publisher, considers his son’s teenage tendency toward aloofness and his own desperate, emotional response.

3. “Internship From Hell.” (Michael McGuire, The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 2013)

Once an intern at El Nuevo Heraldo in Miami, McGuire’s internship sums up a lot of what today’s working youth face: disgust, exhaustion, disillusionment, bouts of hysterical laughter and sweet relief at the end of it all.

4. “Slouching Towards Babylon.” (Anna McConnell, Rookie Magazine, June 2013)

Her hippie peers sneer at her New York upbringing, and sometimes, she does, too. But nature’s sublimity is no match for homesickness.

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Illustration by Kim

Longreads Guest Pick: Rustin Dodd on 'The Courage Of Jill Costello'

Rustin Dodd is a sports reporter at The Kansas City Star. For the most part, he spends his time covering Kansas basketball and football, but he has also covered the Kansas City Royals for the last five years. He’s covered two Final Fours, two Major-League All-Star Games and The Masters. He resides in Lawrence, Kan., home of the best local music scene in the Midwest.


Every year or so, I find myself going back and reading ‘The Courage of Jill Costello,’ a Sports Illustrated story by Chris Ballard from Nov. 29, 2010. It’s often said that the best sports stories are not about sports — and that’s true, of course. But this story is an example of simple, rich storytelling, elegant and beautiful. Jill Costello is a coxswain on the Cal rowing team, diagnosed with cancer before her senior season. (Ballard retraces her final year on campus, letting his deep reporting do the work.) And at its core, Costello’s story is about youth and heart and determination and time, and the question we all ask ourselves: What would we would do if we only had a little bit of life left?

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College Longreads Pick: 'The Other Redskins,' by Kelyn Soong, University of Maryland

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Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher is helping Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: 

Last February, a Washington Redskins executives said on a team talk show that 70 different high schools across the country share the NFL franchise’s controversial name. University of Maryland journalism graduate student Kelyn Soong did a little fact checking. His curiosity led to an impressive piece called “The Other Redskins.” Soong found that not only do 62 high schools still use the term, but also that 28 other schools had changed their team name in the last 25 years. In his reporting, Soong interviewed alumni, school officials, Native Americans, activists, and supporters. He also used data—with the help of interactive designers Sean Henderson and Angela Wong—to place the story in a larger context. The result is a well-reported, well-presented #college #longread.

The Other Redskins

Kelyn Soong | University of Maryland | April 2013 | 13 minutes (3,163 words)

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Professors and students: Share your favorite stories by tagging them with #college #longreads on Twitter, or email links to aileen@longreads.com.

Reading List: Summer Camp

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For anyone who wants to run away to Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, to make new, fun, friends, to live as though summer is forever: This one’s for you.

1. “Into the Woods and Away from Technology.” (Chris Colin, The New Yorker, June 2013)

Welcome to Camp Grounded, where you’ll bring your sleeping bag but not your iPhone. Navarro, Calif. hosts this three-day adult summer camp where campers seek to understand themselves and their relationship to the screens they treasure.

2. “A-Camp May 2013 Recamp #1: Over the Mountain and Into the Woods We Go.” (The Team, Autostraddle, June 2013)

Autostraddle hosted the third installation of A-Camp, a summer-y camp for queer folks, chockfull of workshops, dance parties, feelings, discussion panels, swimming, and arts and crafts. Here, counselors, interns, and campers provide heartfelt, hilarious recapitulations of their experiences and epiphanies. (This is the first of four installments.)

3. “Summer Camp.” (Tyler, Rookie Magazine, June 2013.)

The author’s favorite place in the world. “Noncampers just don’t understand,” he writes.

4. “Transmissions From Camp Trans.” (Michelle Tea, The Believer, November 2003)

Author Michelle Tea explores “Camp Trans,” the campout-music festival that protests the trans-exclusionary policies of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

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Image: Universal Studios

Longreads Guest Pick: Kristen Majewski on 'How Meditation Works'

Kristen Majewski is the social media editor of Prevention.com.

My pick for this week is ‘How Meditation Works,’ by Liz Kulze, in The Atlantic. Meditation is often dismissed as New Age and hokey, but Kulze does a wonderful job of making mindful meditation an accessible notion and perhaps even a necessary one. She is absolutely right that ‘in a culture that continually emphasizes the cultivation of the self, [letting go of a fixed sense of identity] may be the most profound lesson that mindfulness meditation has to offer, and certainly the most bewildering.’ A great reminder for a 140-character world and a must-read for those of us who are constantly plugged in.

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‘My Body Stopped Speaking to Me’: The First-Person Account of a Near-Death Experience

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Our recent Longreads Member Pick by National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello from GQ is now free for everyone. Special thanks to our Longreads Members for helping bring these stories to you—if you’re not a member, join us here.

“My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” is a personal story about Corsello’s near-death experience, first published in GQ in 1995. Read more…

College Longreads Pick: 'When NCAA Schools Abandon Their Injured Athletes,' by Meghan Walsh, UC Berkeley

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Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher is helping Longreads highlight the best of college journalism:

This week’s pick is by Meghan Walsh, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley’s journalism program. Though there are plenty of outraged-laced stories about exploitation in college athletics, Walsh’s tale of Stanley Doughty—a former defensive tackle for the University of South Carolina—revealed an angle often glossed over in other pieces. Who pays health-care costs for injuries incurred as a student athlete? The school does, of course, until the student is off the team. Pro athletes have union contracts to protect them; student-athletes have one page of NCAA of regulations.

‘I Trusted ‘Em’: When NCAA Schools Abandon Their Injured Athletes

Meghan Walsh | The Atlantic | May 2013 | 19 minutes (4,670 words)

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Professors and students: Share your favorite stories by tagging them with #college #longreads on Twitter, or email links to aileen@longreads.com.