SevenQuestions: Greg Knauss

Seven answers on 7Q (also known as the FAQs of life.)
Interviewed by Tom Mangan

Greg Knauss, his keyboard is a member of the family.

His site is here. He also contributes to suck and teevee.

AUTHORS

Michael Fuchs
Elizabeth Hilts
Paul Riddell
Gary Rivlin
Jim Motavalli
Barbara Shafferman
Jules Siegel
Keith Snyder

ARTISTS/POETS/
PHILOSOPHERS

Jon C. Allen
Will Baker
Mike Leung
Jon Sarkin

COOL SITE KEEPERS

Mike Cash
Scott O'Neal Colf
Godfrey Daniels
Cliff Davis, DDS
Tammy Hocking
Wes Modes
Frank Rogan

DIARISTS

Ralph Becker
J. D. Bruns
Linda DeVault
Mike Reed
Moira Richardson
Jessamyn West

FILMMAKERS

Ben Kufrin
Dean Mermell

JOURNALISTS

Bernie
Mary Cooley-Jones
Lindsay Crysler
Jamie Dupree
M.O.A.T.M.A.I.
David Moll
Robert Niles
John Orr
Steven Ovadia
Pierce Presley
Mack Reed
Rip Rense
Curtis Ross
Neal Ross
John Scalzi
Catherine Seipp
David Sheets
Dwight Silverman
Matt Welch

MOVIE MAVENS

MaryAnn Johanson
Brian Koller

HUMORISTS

Debbie Farmer
Mike Jasper
Madeleine Begun Kane
Patrick Keller
Bob Sassone
Valerie Sprague
Ken Swarmer
Ian Wolff

SOLDIERS

Maj. Jon Anderson, USAF

TEACHERS

John Warner

TECHIES

Chris Adamson
Mike Gunderloy
Michael Ivey
Greg Knauss
Floyd Maxwell
Ellen McDonough
Mike Pingleton
Wayne Thume
John Worth

TEENS

Gary Baum
Marty Beckerman

UNDECLARED

Bev Gibbs
Beth Reid

WEBLOGGERS

Jason Kottke
Jish Mukerji

ONE
I see your writing all over the place but I never see much evidence of what you do for a living -- beyond that you're a computer programmer. Give us a rundown on how you pay the rent.

You don't see mention of it because most of it's astonishingly dull. I'm vice president of Research & Development -- which doesn't sound nearly as impressive when you realize that I'm all of Research & Development -- for a teeny-tiny little company that writes historical security valuation software. Essentially, our applications help dead people figure out how much they're worth so they can pay their taxes.

Death and taxes -- I'm a blast at a party, let me tell you.

The tech is fun and my boss gives me an amazing amount of freedom to goof around with stuff -- our Web site, internal systems, anything really -- but the vast majority of my job involves all the tedious nit-pickery of translating the tax law for Form 706 Schedule B into code. Whee.

Now aren't you sorry you asked?

TWO
One of the first dictums for most writers is to never write for publication if you've not going to get paid. With the exception of your work for the commercial site suck.com, it looks to me like you've been giving it way in droves these past few years. Why not find a market for your work?

Because writing is my hobby. I made the mistake of turning a hobby into work once before -- with coding -- and while I still enjoy it, it hasn't really been the same since.

Basically, I write to amuse myself and my friends, and if someone's willing to pay me for it, great. If not, well then, no harm done.

That said, laziness also plays a big part in it. Heck, just finding paying publications on the Web takes some doing, but working to deadlines and word counts is exhausting. I'd much rather write something on spec and see if anyone's interested in publishing it (even for free) than working under the conditions that real writers face.

Plus, I don't want to take up smoking. It's my understanding that real writers smoke.

THREE

A lot of us dove into the Web with great gusto three or four years ago -- far fewer of us are still showing the same enthusiasm or creativity. What do you think took the helium out of so many people's online balloons?

I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, because I've felt my own balloon sagging and getting puckery. If, um, I can carry the metaphor.

There's a whole host of reasons, I think, any or all of which might apply to the folks who aren't participating in the way they used to. Mix 'n match:

The Web's been mainstreamed faster than any other medium in history, so the thrill of being on the cutting edge has worn off faster than with any other medium in history. That seat-of-the-pants buzz is harder to come by when cartons of eggs have URLs on them.

Content is hard. There's a certain ego rush that comes from having thousands -- thousands! -- of people come to read something you wrote, but you build up a tolerance to it pretty quickly. Thousands? Pfft. Why should I blow another weekend just for the sake of a few thousand hits?

People -- even geeks -- get lives. I suspect that a lot of early enthusiasts have aged into their late twenties or early thirties during the existence of the Web, and gone through the accompanying life-changes. Since I discovered the Web in 1994, I've: gotten promoted, gotten married, gotten promoted again, bought a house, had a child. All of these are arguably more important than goofing with HTML -- no matter how much I enjoy it -- and each takes time.

The Web's gotten so big. I suspect that new and interesting stuff is being done every day -- stuff that could inspire and reinvigorate oldsters -- but it's well-nigh impossible to find.

And on and on and on...

FOUR
You were writing computer games in the mid-80s -- can you give us an idea of some of the obstacles you faced back in the neolithic of game development?

My answer, of course, is completely distorted by this great mass of sickly sweet nostalgia that I carry around with me. If you'd asked me fifteen years ago, I suspect my response would have included a lot of cursing.

But now when I look back, I see the "obstacles" as advantages. Slow machines, clunky graphics and crude sound all helped make the games better. Too many programs today rely on the strength of the hardware rather than the designers' imaginations to get them out of trouble. In the old days, you had to do something fundamentally new each time you set out because there was so little to work with.

I enjoyed Doom, of course, but everything id (and the entire industry) has done since then has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The games sure look pretty, but they don't draw you in the way cruder but more imaginative stuff did in the past. Some of my favorite games of all time were text-based Infocoms. Deadline was the best investment of my childhood.

Trapped on a desert island, I'd rather have and Atari 800 with Fort Apocalypse, Boulderdash and Necromancer than a tricked-out PC with Wolfenstien 3D, Doom and Quake.

So much for obstacles.

FIVE
What do you do when you're not watching television, writing or goofing around on the Web?

You mean there're other things to do than watch TV and use the computer? Oh, man. Why wasn't I informed?

I spend my time on all the normal stuff, I suppose: Maintain house, maintain yard, maintain car, repeat. Sleep plays a minor role occasionally.

I take every moment I can with my wife and kid. My son is ten months old and a little scooting, drooling, screeching miracle. He's just amazing, more fun than I could have ever imagined. Every time I turn my back, he's aged a little more, so I've been trying not to turn my back. I spend a lot more time crawling around on the floor than I used to, listening to the amusing popping noises my knees make.

SIX
Seems to me everyone who writes for teevee.org -- and just about anyone else with functioning frontal lobes -- agrees that 98 percent everything on the box is dreck, which has been the case since the first antenna went up 50 years ago. Why hasn't everyone hung up their pens in frustration after a half-century of this crap?

Well, for me, my frustration with TV comes not with the medium itself, but how it's used. TV -- the technology, the box itself -- is a dandy thing, a neat trick. It's the garbage that's shoveled into one end and extruded out the other that I have a problem with. Call it foolish hope, but I keep waiting for the potential of sequential static images to be fulfilled.

As for why we keep writing about it: is there a bigger, easier, more mainstream target in the entire world? What more could a writer want? I feel like a political reporter covering Dan Quayle. Writing for TeeVee is fun, we get the occasional ego-stroke of an appreciative letter, and it gives the staff a reason to hang out together that's slightly less pathetic than just retelling college stories.

And, heck, if we're busy writing about TV, at least we're not watching it.

SEVEN
My theory is that wireless is the future of the Internet -- if for no other reason than it's such a pain to run wire vs. build towers or launch satellites. Still, lots of folks are saying wireless Internet is way, way off. What's keeping wireless back?

For me, money. I know there are lots of bandwidth and transport mechanism problems, but the thing that keeps me -- and, I suspect, a lot of other people -- from goofing with wireless (on the hobbyist level, at least) is that it's so damned expensive. In order of priority: Food, clothing, shelter, [several thousand other things omitted], wireless.

Here: I first got interested in the Internet when I found out that UCSD gave free accounts to students. I made sure my first job was wired up. Eventually, ISPs appeared and I could have a connection from home without too much trouble or expense.

Wireless needs to evolve to that level before it will really take off. I should be able to install some hardware, some drivers and be billed at about what my cable costs. Period. Anything beyond that leaves me wondering if the luxury of working in the park across from my office is really worth the price.

That said: Damn, do I want wireless Internet. So bad. So bad.

THE BIG INDEX...
Who they are, what they do, how they think. Go there now.

A TO Z ARCHIVE...

Everybody here, with quickie bios. Go there now.

Return to the main Seven Questions page
See the original Newsies 7Q project

Contact info@sevenquestions.com
Copyright 1999-2002, Thomas L. Mangan



Seven answers on 7Q (also known as the FAQs of life.)	Interviewed by Tom Mangan Greg Knauss, his keyboard is a member of the family. His site is here. He also contributes to suck and teevee.	AUTHORS Michael Fuchs Elizabeth Hilts Paul Riddell Gary Rivlin Jim Motavalli Barbara Shafferman Jules Siegel Keith Snyder ARTISTS/POETS/ PHILOSOPHERS Jon C. Allen Will Baker Mike Leung Jon Sarkin COOL SITE KEEPERS Mike Cash Scott O'Neal Colf Godfrey Daniels Cliff Davis, DDS Tammy Hocking Wes Modes Frank Rogan DIARISTS Ralph Becker J. D. Bruns Linda DeVault Mike Reed Moira Richardson Jessamyn West FILMMAKERS Ben Kufrin Dean Mermell JOURNALISTS Bernie Mary Cooley-Jones Lindsay Crysler Jamie Dupree M.O.A.T.M.A.I. David Moll Robert Niles John Orr Steven Ovadia Pierce Presley Mack Reed Rip Rense Curtis Ross Neal Ross John Scalzi Catherine Seipp David Sheets Dwight Silverman Matt Welch MOVIE MAVENS MaryAnn Johanson Brian Koller HUMORISTS Debbie Farmer Mike Jasper Madeleine Begun Kane Patrick Keller Bob Sassone Valerie Sprague Ken Swarmer Ian Wolff SOLDIERS Maj. Jon Anderson, USAF TEACHERS John Warner TECHIES Chris Adamson Mike Gunderloy Michael Ivey Greg Knauss Floyd Maxwell Ellen McDonough Mike Pingleton Wayne Thume John Worth TEENS Gary Baum Marty Beckerman UNDECLARED Bev Gibbs Beth Reid WEBLOGGERS Jason Kottke Jish Mukerji



ONE	I see your writing all over the place but I never see much evidence of what you do for a living -- beyond that you're a computer programmer. Give us a rundown on how you pay the rent. You don't see mention of it because most of it's astonishingly dull. I'm vice president of Research & Development -- which doesn't sound nearly as impressive when you realize that I'm all of Research & Development -- for a teeny-tiny little company that writes historical security valuation software. Essentially, our applications help dead people figure out how much they're worth so they can pay their taxes. Death and taxes -- I'm a blast at a party, let me tell you. The tech is fun and my boss gives me an amazing amount of freedom to goof around with stuff -- our Web site, internal systems, anything really -- but the vast majority of my job involves all the tedious nit-pickery of translating the tax law for Form 706 Schedule B into code. Whee. Now aren't you sorry you asked?



TWO	One of the first dictums for most writers is to never write for publication if you've not going to get paid. With the exception of your work for the commercial site suck.com, it looks to me like you've been giving it way in droves these past few years. Why not find a market for your work? Because writing is my hobby. I made the mistake of turning a hobby into work once before -- with coding -- and while I still enjoy it, it hasn't really been the same since. Basically, I write to amuse myself and my friends, and if someone's willing to pay me for it, great. If not, well then, no harm done. That said, laziness also plays a big part in it. Heck, just finding paying publications on the Web takes some doing, but working to deadlines and word counts is exhausting. I'd much rather write something on spec and see if anyone's interested in publishing it (even for free) than working under the conditions that real writers face. Plus, I don't want to take up smoking. It's my understanding that real writers smoke.



THREE	A lot of us dove into the Web with great gusto three or four years ago -- far fewer of us are still showing the same enthusiasm or creativity. What do you think took the helium out of so many people's online balloons? I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, because I've felt my own balloon sagging and getting puckery. If, um, I can carry the metaphor. There's a whole host of reasons, I think, any or all of which might apply to the folks who aren't participating in the way they used to. Mix 'n match: The Web's been mainstreamed faster than any other medium in history, so the thrill of being on the cutting edge has worn off faster than with any other medium in history. That seat-of-the-pants buzz is harder to come by when cartons of eggs have URLs on them. Content is hard. There's a certain ego rush that comes from having thousands -- thousands! -- of people come to read something you wrote, but you build up a tolerance to it pretty quickly. Thousands? Pfft. Why should I blow another weekend just for the sake of a few thousand hits? People -- even geeks -- get lives. I suspect that a lot of early enthusiasts have aged into their late twenties or early thirties during the existence of the Web, and gone through the accompanying life-changes. Since I discovered the Web in 1994, I've: gotten promoted, gotten married, gotten promoted again, bought a house, had a child. All of these are arguably more important than goofing with HTML -- no matter how much I enjoy it -- and each takes time. The Web's gotten so big. I suspect that new and interesting stuff is being done every day -- stuff that could inspire and reinvigorate oldsters -- but it's well-nigh impossible to find. And on and on and on...



FOUR	You were writing computer games in the mid-80s -- can you give us an idea of some of the obstacles you faced back in the neolithic of game development? My answer, of course, is completely distorted by this great mass of sickly sweet nostalgia that I carry around with me. If you'd asked me fifteen years ago, I suspect my response would have included a lot of cursing. But now when I look back, I see the "obstacles" as advantages. Slow machines, clunky graphics and crude sound all helped make the games better. Too many programs today rely on the strength of the hardware rather than the designers' imaginations to get them out of trouble. In the old days, you had to do something fundamentally new each time you set out because there was so little to work with. I enjoyed Doom, of course, but everything id (and the entire industry) has done since then has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The games sure look pretty, but they don't draw you in the way cruder but more imaginative stuff did in the past. Some of my favorite games of all time were text-based Infocoms. Deadline was the best investment of my childhood. Trapped on a desert island, I'd rather have and Atari 800 with Fort Apocalypse, Boulderdash and Necromancer than a tricked-out PC with Wolfenstien 3D, Doom and Quake. So much for obstacles.



FIVE	What do you do when you're not watching television, writing or goofing around on the Web? You mean there're other things to do than watch TV and use the computer? Oh, man. Why wasn't I informed? I spend my time on all the normal stuff, I suppose: Maintain house, maintain yard, maintain car, repeat. Sleep plays a minor role occasionally. I take every moment I can with my wife and kid. My son is ten months old and a little scooting, drooling, screeching miracle. He's just amazing, more fun than I could have ever imagined. Every time I turn my back, he's aged a little more, so I've been trying not to turn my back. I spend a lot more time crawling around on the floor than I used to, listening to the amusing popping noises my knees make.



SIX	Seems to me everyone who writes for teevee.org -- and just about anyone else with functioning frontal lobes -- agrees that 98 percent everything on the box is dreck, which has been the case since the first antenna went up 50 years ago. Why hasn't everyone hung up their pens in frustration after a half-century of this crap? Well, for me, my frustration with TV comes not with the medium itself, but how it's used. TV -- the technology, the box itself -- is a dandy thing, a neat trick. It's the garbage that's shoveled into one end and extruded out the other that I have a problem with. Call it foolish hope, but I keep waiting for the potential of sequential static images to be fulfilled. As for why we keep writing about it: is there a bigger, easier, more mainstream target in the entire world? What more could a writer want? I feel like a political reporter covering Dan Quayle. Writing for TeeVee is fun, we get the occasional ego-stroke of an appreciative letter, and it gives the staff a reason to hang out together that's slightly less pathetic than just retelling college stories. And, heck, if we're busy writing about TV, at least we're not watching it.



SEVEN	My theory is that wireless is the future of the Internet -- if for no other reason than it's such a pain to run wire vs. build towers or launch satellites. Still, lots of folks are saying wireless Internet is way, way off. What's keeping wireless back? For me, money. I know there are lots of bandwidth and transport mechanism problems, but the thing that keeps me -- and, I suspect, a lot of other people -- from goofing with wireless (on the hobbyist level, at least) is that it's so damned expensive. In order of priority: Food, clothing, shelter, [several thousand other things omitted], wireless. Here: I first got interested in the Internet when I found out that UCSD gave free accounts to students. I made sure my first job was wired up. Eventually, ISPs appeared and I could have a connection from home without too much trouble or expense. Wireless needs to evolve to that level before it will really take off. I should be able to install some hardware, some drivers and be billed at about what my cable costs. Period. Anything beyond that leaves me wondering if the luxury of working in the park across from my office is really worth the price. That said: Damn, do I want wireless Internet. So bad. So bad.


	THE BIG INDEX... Who they are, what they do, how they think. Go there now. A TO Z ARCHIVE... Everybody here, with quickie bios. Go there now. Return to the main Seven Questions page See the original Newsies 7Q project Contact info@sevenquestions.com Copyright 1999-2002, Thomas L. Mangan