College bowl season is upon us and with it comes not just the football games, but also the intricate “card stunts” performed by stadium audiences. These highly-coordinated crowd work is capable of producing detailed images similar to pixelated images on computer screens. Michael Littman’s new book, “Code to Joy: Why Everyone Should Learn a Little Programming,” provides an accessible and entertaining guide to the basics of programming for fledgling coders of all ages and details how we need not distrust an automaton-filled future so long as we learn to speak their language. Card stunts have come a long way since their start in college sports in the 1920s. They leverage the fact that the members of a stadium crowd sit in seats arranged in a grid and transform themselves into something like a big computer display screen. Excerpted from Michael L Littman’s “Code to Joy: Why Everyone Should Learn a Little Programming.”
Mastering the Crowd: The Technique of Stadium Card Stunts
