✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Glenn McDonald: On Dungeons & Dragons, data alchemy, and radically open software - imbue

imbue.com · 1,351 words · saved by 1 readers

When Glenn McDonald received his first computer at age fourteen — a silver Texas Instruments TI-99/4A that stored programs on cassette drives and displayed text through a connected television screen — he saw not just a machine but a box of “electrified possibility.” Armed with only a BASIC programming manual, he cobbled together his first software program: a stats-keeping application for his Dungeons & Dragons group. What had been a tedious exercise in pencil-and-paper calculation could now be completed with a few keystrokes. “Somehow, I built a thing that made it possible for me to focus more on what I wanted that experience to be like,” Glenn said. “I could concentrate on spinning out this fantasy world for the role-playing, and didn’t have to spend as much time adding up bonuses and figuring out how many Kobolds would be killed by the glowing sword in the next six seconds.” This early experience with computers shaped Glenn’s fundamental view of computers as tools to be molded to hum

Glenn McDonald: On Dungeons & Dragons, data alchemy, and radically open software - Imbue Article / Company Glenn McDonald: On Dungeons & Dragons, data alchemy, and radically open software 8 min read Last updated 24 Apr 2026 Ashley Zhang Marketing For this post in our Humans of Imbue series, I sat down to chat with Glenn McDonald , a Member of Technical Staff who works on product prototyping. We discussed his background as a music algorithm guru, his thoughts on software as "applied philosophy," and how we can reimagine humanity's relationship with technology. When Glenn McDonald received his f

Explore this link on the map →

related reading