JACK and the MACHINE

An Interactive Documentary

Once known as #148445 within the Third Reich, Jack Tramiel would rise from the Nazi concentration camps and build the information age's great equalizer: the world's first "computer for the masses, not the classes."

The Latest

Our Lives, Encoded

Image of 3 1/2" diskettes

Our latest effort, Our Lives, Encoded, explores the trappings of living in the ephemeral world of data and machine communication.

Published by Broken Toilets, co-authored by D. Schmüdde and Alexander Rakoczy.

More About Jack and the Machine

The Experience

Jack and the Machine is a story idiosyncratic to the digital age, poised for a new kind of audience interaction and distribution. This fascinating story will be told where the consumer lives, on the consumer’s terms.

The project already includes essays, talks, and interactive content. It will soon be expanded to include tablet-based experiences, animations, and documentary content.

Sign up to our mailing list below and keep up with what we're making!

Social Activism

Jack Tramiel’s dramatic life story is interwoven with the growth of information technology, culminating with his remarkable creation of the mass market personal computer. Jack and the Machine will demonstrate the personal computer’s impact on contemporary issues such as corporate and government data collection and the protection of whistleblowers and hackers. Using the past, the experience will provide context for the difficult decisions surrounding today’s most controversial digital issues.

Early Buzz

Jack and the Machine has seen early success. The team behind the experience has already made amazing friends and formed valuable partnerships:

Media Residency Program, Berlin (3 month incubation) • Broken Toilets (publisher) • Tribeca Film Institute, NYC (selected hackathon participant) • PechaKucha, Berlin (presentation) • Internet Society, NYC (presentation) • Motherboard, London (interview) • The Absurdist/Endless (publisher) • C-Base, Berlin (presentation)