Alan Alcorn will speak to a class taught by Dan Baldwin that examines the impact of digital media within popular culture at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26, in IT Room 152 of the Informatics and Communications Technology Complex. The complex is located at West and Michigan streets.

Baldwin said Alcorn will be able to share his insights concerning what was happening in society when Atari was founded, the role of start-up companies outside of Silicon Valley and his views on the future of video games.

Alcorn stood at the cradle of the revolution in the video game industry when he designed PONG in 1972. Although it wasn't the first video game, it was the first coin-operated game that was an immediate success. PONG launched a video game boom that made thousands of kids want to become computer programmers and prepared an entire generation for interaction with a blinking and buzzing computer screen. He was appointed a Fellow at Apple in 1986; while there he worked on many projects including several new computer prototypes and a project that led to Quick Time. He started Silicon Gaming in 1994 to develop a multi-media slot machine for casino gaming. The company went public in September of 1996 and shipped its first machines in January 1997. In 1998, Alcorn founded Zowie Intertainment, a spinout from Interval Research. Zowie developed and produced a child's playset that had a location system that allowed the personal computer to respond to the child's play.