robots, atari, and airports

Two friends have released books worth taking a look at.

First, Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has written "Wired for War."  I was lucky enough to read an early copy and found it an insightful and occasionally disturbing read. Robots intersect with virtual worlds in many different ways, so Pete's book raises a host of issues that also will eventually apply to virtual worlds. You can hear Pete talk about his book with Terry Gross on "Fresh Air."

Second, Ian Bogost, author, game developer, and professor at Georgia Tech has written a new book, "Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (Platform Studies)." Racing looks at how the VCS hardware, and the ecosystem around VCS development, shaped the games that were created for it and, ultimately, game development as a whole.

One more thing. Ian has just released an iPhone version of Jetset: a Game for Airports. Boing Boing already picked it up, so you probably already heard about it. In case you haven't, Jetset is a delightful parody of airport security and a pretty solid casual iPhone game. I've been beta testing it while Jetset managed to pass the tortuous meta-game of Apple iPhone App approval, so it's great that it is out. It's a cheap thrill, check it out!