Comment by dreamworld
Comment by dreamworld 2 days ago
It might be of some interest to cultural historians in the future. But I think it makes more sense to take sample+curated data. But in any case if we can afford it, eh why not.
Comment by dreamworld 2 days ago
It might be of some interest to cultural historians in the future. But I think it makes more sense to take sample+curated data. But in any case if we can afford it, eh why not.
My son is into retrocomputing, mostly using older hardware I have from when I was younger, and we have a stack of old compaq desktops where you can't access the bios because it requires a specific floppy that is nearly impossible to find online. This is 486/pentium era stuff, the older stuff is even harder to find.
I've been looking for a DEC terminal with Sixel, Tektronix and ReGIS graphics for a while, with zero success. They weren't rare at all - they were a massive success, and, yet, it seems almost all ended up in a recycling facility or an e-waste dumpster. Many other terminals emulated them and expanded on their feature set.
We don't know now what to curate for the future. We should preserve as much of everything we can - we don't know what will be important in 50, or 500 years.
Case in point: retrocomputing is my hobby. I buy, restore, preserve, and use old computers. Most of them are home computers, because business computers go directly from the office to the recycling facility or the landfill. Unless someone deliberately preserved, say, a Burroughs B-25 desktop, or the similar from Data General, they are gone.