A quiet thank you to Bill Atkinson

A few years ago, James Altucher interviewed Bruce Feiler about his book The Search, where he talks about “workquakes”, unexpected moments that change the course of your career or life. In that conversation, James shared a question he often asks people: What did you love when you were twelve, and what did you love about it?

They talk about how this can offer clues to what still makes you come alive and what might be something you can go back to doing in some shape or form.

When I was around twelve, I spent hours on an Apple IIe, designing imaginary adventures using HyperCard. You’d create a stack of “cards” with basic drawings, and you could link them to each other. This was the earliest kind of hyperlink. HyperTalk, its built-in programming language, and let me add interactivity so things could move or change. I’d build houses you could explore, secret passageways, and objects to collect.

That same year, I’d love drawing and designing campground layouts with transparent overlays and whiteboard markers, showing where we’d pitch our tent and where the facilities were (we did a lot of camping that year). I tracked the pop charts week by week (remember Rick Dees and the weekly top 40?), plotting rises and falls with colored lines. I typed BASIC code from English computer magazines to generate pixelated sprites, or made a little address book database for my friends’ details to go into.

Looking back, it’s easy to see the common thread: I loved design, data, and computing. I still do.

HyperCard was something special. It let me build a world, not just imagine one. It was where code and creativity met, and I didn’t need permission to start.

Last week, Bill Atkinson, who created HyperCard and helped shape the original Macintosh, passed away. He was 74.

You can read more about his life here. If you’ve ever clicked a hyperlink or dragged a window on a Mac, you’ve experienced some of his thinking.

Thanks, Bill.