I've lately been thinking (trying to recollect and rethink) the reasons and ideas of why did I end up in this computers and programming business in the first place. Partly it's of course because of my dad who was a mainframe programmer in his youth, and left dangerous books lying around at home, so I got infected by bits and bytes at a tender age... but I do remember when and how the original idea the big door of possibilities opened up in my mind.
It all goes back to my fascination with history/geography/languages. Since I started to do the required 1+1 equals 2 kind of thinking, for example: to feed cities you need farmers, to efficiently manage large economies you need writing (and, for really large economies you need something like... computers). Cause and effect, ripple effects. Then it dawned on me: simulation. With computers I could simulate all these processes. (For the current state of the art simulation, see the Japanese Earth Simulator.
Games also affected this reasoning, but maybe a bit surprisingly, not so much computer games, at least in the beginning (remember, we are talking Pac-Man era here...). I mean games, like board games, and role-playing (dice, character forms, dungeon master). I very quickly became fascinated by things like generating your own fantasy societies and towns (the "random wandering monster" tables quickly lost their interest, though, since one could quickly see that there was no ecology behind any of that...). Then when in the university I met Nethack, Moria and so forth, my path was clear.
Of course, as Fate would have it, none (or very little) of this simulation business ever took place. Studies, and then real day job, quickly ate my free time. But maybe I could try dusting off my old ideas, just as recreational programming. I have no plans to create The Killer World Simulator, say, and try to sell it for gazillion bucks. That's the problem many people in the simulation business seem to have: they develop something (say, a multiplayer game engine with "realistic physics"), and then try to sell it, usually the business drying up pretty quickly. The problem they are facing is that reality is a complex thing, and another person's simulator is another person's crap.
To keep our theme of anciency, my latest read books are Ancient Mysteries and Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples 8000 BC - AD 1500.
The first book is by the authors of Ancient Mysteries, and it takes a fresh look at all the usual old "mysteries" like the Pyramids, King Arthur, Easter Inland. What I mean by fresh look is that while they keep within the limits of accepted science (Erich von Daniken being classified as a charlatan and a crank that he is), they do look at the facts, and especially nice is that they look at the latest facts known about the matters, and giving several competing theories. Usually you can find books about these subjects of only two kinds: either new age "soft science" drivel (yes, I'm biased for hard facts, and you should be, too), or single-minded adherence to one scientific theory. But in this book the authors nicely mention both the lunatic fringe, and then several slightly differing scientific attempts at the matter.
The second book is hard-core archaeology: "based on the relative frequencies of Roman amphora types 30b and 30c, we can say that the Armorica - Ireland trade route ..." So reading it can at times be a little bit taxing-- but nevertheless, it was a fascinating read. Firstly, because it's such a long period of history the book is looking at: 9500 years. This allows for long arcs, and seeing the long time trends. Secondly, because it looks at European history from a fresh perspective: the basic trick is to turn your map by degrees, and see the coastline of Europe as a series of rocky promontories, each of which can be reached from the other by a few days' sailing. Iberian, Armorica/Brittany, Land's End/Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland. All the dozens of names these places have had over the millennia, all the dozens of people inhabiting them. The "megalith people", the Celts, the Picts, the Romans, the Phoenicians. Did you know that most of the coastal cities of Spain are of Phoenician, that is, modern day Lebanese) origin? That at about year 400 AD many of the officers (not just troops) of Roman legions were "barbarians", that is, Franks, Huns, Goths? That most of Scotland was Scandinavian for several hundreds of years? And so forth.