How God Makes God
Press comments and reviews
Tony Tyler, review in MacUSER (UK)
"This extremely interesting product is an entirely new type of CD
one of the most intelligent and thought provoking I've encountered."
"...a better vehicle, I would suggest, than the gaudy rubbish favoured to date by the heavyweight developers."
The Electronic Author
"...a lesson to all the CD-ROM producers out there."
"...anyone who wants to get involved in the multimedia revolution can look to it for inspiration."
Peter Cook, writing in INTERACTIVE MEDIA INTERNATIONAL
"...'click' went the light bulb in my head, because this is what this programme is all about: bridging the world of concept and theory and real life."
MACWORLD (Italy)
"At a time of interactive films and risk-defying multimedia applications, we have received from the U.K. an unusual product which we bring to your attention"
"...we would like to recommend the reading of this CD-ROM to those about to enter the realms of creating a CD-ROM (whichever subject they choose)"
MacWorld (Sweden)
"HOW GOD MAKES GOD is a charming CD-Book, offering education, entertaining and sometimes mind bending experiments of thoughts."
"By using speech bubbles, cartoon illustrations, and interactive experiments for thoughts and theories, the reader can learn in a clear and easy way."
Dr. Martin Warnke of Luneburg University, writing a review in the German magazine MACUP, comments:
"The work displays a certain literary quality: the logical sequence and elegance of the graphics; the wit in the contrast between the content and the presentation; and especially the interspersed computer simulations, which impress with their imprint of atmosphere and mood"
"...in summary, "How God Makes God" provides in a most significant way a foundation for modern science."
"especially praiseworthy is the use of the computer as a medium of simulation."
MacBiter, writing in COMPUTER SHOPPER (UK)
"But by God it does make you think"
"If you like having your brain stretched you can't do better".
Tim Carrigan in THE MAC
"...intriguing and seductive"
"a fascinating insight into the relationship between probability and actuality".
Irish Times
"What's this? A CD-ROM for Apple Macs with no sound and only black and white images? Yet where else can you play roulette, toss coins, devise optimum strategies, or, just sit back and follow playful dialogues about everything from the nature of money to religion, infidelity, genetics, games theory and happiness.
"How God Makes God" is a stunningly different electronic comicbook. Your guides are three young art-nouveau type women (all the images are culled from 19th-century literature), and there's a sense of deja vu if you're a fan of Douglas Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas and Godel Esher Bach. It's similar territory, a fascinating and fertile space where maths, science, games and culture collide. Funny, stylish moody and brainstretching - author/designer Peter Small has created one of the most unusual interactive experiences of the year."
bOING bOING Issue #54
"How God made God is one of the most interesting CD-ROMs I've seen. Using old Victorian woodcuts, British author Peter Small ties together probability, game theory, economics, genetic algorithms, and selfish gene theory into an entertaining story that illustrates his version of the evolutionary processes that have formed the human mind.
Small claims that our "genes evolved to favor emotions which make us want to act in wayswhich maximize our chances of cooperating with each other." The many experiments and simulations in the program [you get to play dice and roulette, kill cats and hang people] provide first-hand experience of the mathematical concepts presented in the work."