Word: planet
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...green from one corner of the screen, drop it on a barren stretch of land and watch it blossom into a prairie. I could sprinkle the forest primeval with dinosaurs, insects and birds. I could fill the seas with starfish, lobsters and whales. I could rattle my little planet with computer-generated earthquakes and hurricanes...
Things really get interesting when the creatures on my pet planet develop intelligence. The program is set up so that the beings that become smart are not necessarily human. They can as easily be dolphins or spiders. In one game I played, it was a lizard that discovered fire. Africa was soon littered with Stone Age reptile cities...
...medicine, agriculture and the arts. But playing the Almighty, I discover, is complicated -- and dangerous. Skimp on medical research, and your SimEarthlings are pestered by plagues. Cut back in the philosophy department, and wars break out. Let the master race linger too long in the industrial age, and the planet is choked with pollution. If, on the other hand, you steer your beings adroitly toward the ages of information and nanotechnology (molecule building), they will spontaneously load themselves into tiny spacecraft, turn the earth into a wildlife preserve and take off to colonize other planets -- the closest thing to "winning...
Start with a lump of rock, add some flora and fauna and before you know it, your little planet's growing out of control. With a program called SimEarth, the whole world's in your hands...
ENVIRONMENT: Is the planet on the back burner...