Life
Born 1953 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, as the second child of Rex Barger and Criss Barger Stange, Jorn Barger spent his childhood in his hometown. At age 11 he got to use an early programmable digital computer, the Minivac 601. His family moved to Bemus Point, New York, in 1966.
In high school Barger specialized in math and science, but also read Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, and Jiddu Krishnamurti. He graduated a year early, as valedictorian from Maple Grove Jr.-Sr. High School in Bemus Point, then attended Jamestown Community College, Antioch College, New College of Florida and University at Buffalo without taking a degree. In 1973 he decided against a career in computing and "worked on self-discovery" instead for the next six years. During this period, in 1978, he lived for six months at The Farm, Stephen Gaskin's intentional community in Tennessee.
During the first half of the 1980s he programmed games and educational software for the Apple II, the Commodore 64, and the Atari 800. From 1989 to the end of 1992, Barger worked as a research programmer at Northwestern University's Institute for the Learning Sciences under the artificial intelligence researcher Roger Schank. He is not known to have held regular employment since and supports himself with "odd bits of contract work."
Previously a longtime resident of the Rogers Park neighborhood in Chicago, Barger was living in Socorro, New Mexico as of late 2003.
Read more about this topic: Jorn Barger
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“The train was crammed, the heat stifling. We feel out of sorts, but do not quite know if we are hungry or drowsy. But when we have fed and slept, life will regain its looks, and the American instruments will make music in the merry cafe described by our friend Lange. And then, sometime later, we die.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall.... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn’t do if your life depended on it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)