Ben Zotto
Ben studies and writes about technology and design. He quite literally stumbled over a Sphere, and that moment of kismet was the beginning of the path that led to this book.
Out for a jog, Ben came across a pile of discarded circuit boards and case parts, which turned out to be most of an original 1975 Sphere computer. An engineer by training, he set out to bring the sidewalk machine to life. His research also revealed that Sphere—and its founder and community—had fallen out of a historical record that needed correcting. Go Computer Now! is the result.
Earlier in Ben’s career, he devised the font rendering system for Microsoft's Xbox 360 entertainment console and created Penultimate, a bestselling handwriting app acquired by Evernote. More recently, he designed a widely-used typeface, Fog City Gothic, based on San Francisco's historical street signage, and authored a documented retrospective of the work of Bob Buckter, the colorist most responsible for the legendary aesthetics of the city's historic homes. He lives in San Francisco, where he is looking for the next story to tell.
Talks, podcasts, & press
Ben is enthusiastic about talks, podcast appearances, honestly really any excuse at all to talk about Go Computer Now!, Sphere Corporation, and the early personal computer industry. Contact info@gocomputernow.com.
Press materials, high-res images, and links to coverage are on the press kit page. To read about the book itself, see the homepage; the companion research project — including an in-browser Sphere emulator — lives at sphere.computer.