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A question from someone a bit younger: What was the purpose of printing out online discussions? Was it to read them while not at the computer? Was it to physically archive them?
A question from someone a bit younger: What was the purpose of printing out online discussions? Was it to read them while not at the computer? Was it to physically archive them?
You have to remember that there was a time when phone lines and internet connections shared resources. Also, the internet wasn't nearly as fast as it is now, even a decade ago, so printing meant you had that copy locally without needing to wait for load times. I have a couple of GameFAQs discussions and cheat lists for various PS2/GameCube games from the early 2000s. They're stowed in a folder because it was a hassle…
Of course you could save pages, or even print to PDF (after installing ghostscript). But that's nowhere near as comfortable to read
A question from someone a bit younger: What was the purpose of printing out online discussions? Was it to read them while not at the computer? Was it to physically archive them?
You have to remember that there was a time when phone lines and internet connections shared resources. Also, the internet wasn't nearly as fast as it is now, even a decade ago, so printing meant you had that copy locally without needing to wait for load times. I have a couple of GameFAQs discussions and cheat lists for various PS2/GameCube games from the early 2000s. They're stowed in a folder because it was a hassle…
So while I understand the need for printing out stuff back then, I'm a bit puzzled why someone would print out forum discussions per se.
Hey there, I do some work with the Archive folks as an ad hoc physical archive volunteer. I'll pay for you to ship them and facilitate getting them ingested into items and a collection if you'd like. Let me know how to get in touch. Once scanned, derive operations will take care of OCR and generating relevant metadata from the artifacts. If there are any issues (copyright, etc) preventing these items from being publi…
Do you take MYSQL backups of complete BBS sites?
https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive might be helpful
If you have an artifact in digital format already, you can self serve and don't need my help. Patron services at the org can provide guidance if you are unsure of item value, upload mechanics, collections, metadata, etc.
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Well, I'm over thirty, so I do remember metered connections and life without a smartphone. The shared computer reason explains it completely, thanks :)
From your initial comment I assumed a 14 year old to be fair.
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I get this answer a lot when I ask similar question but how do we scan it? Taking a Photos of every print out from our Phone? That is 1000s of photos each needing to snap and focus. Not everyone has a scanner, and not every scanner has automated tray feed. And even if they do the quality of their scan are really low by default. I have similar question with Business Cards as well. I have hundreds if not thousands of t…
I use https://1dollarscan.com/ if I don't need the physical items back, and use https://www.scancafe.com/ if I do. Those digital files then get ingested into my workflow. (no affiliation, just a customer)
One general piece of advice is that before you go crazy, think about what you really care about saving. There’s a cost to scanning of course. There’s also a cost to metadata and other cataloging so that you can actually find what you’ve scanned.
For photos everything is in Lightroom with at least a modicum of organization. When my dad decided he’d like a digital picture frame of older family pics it literally took me about 30 minutes to pull together.
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> Disk drives did exist. They did, but FWIW, they were very small and fairly expensive compared to contemporary times. The attitude towards using disk space was a bit different back then, because it was a much scarcer and more valuable resource.
Furthermore, there was probably more of a reflexive printing things out at that point which took a long time to break. I certainly downloaded BBS and Usenet forums to read offline on my computer but a lot of us printed a lot of stuff out on a daily basis. It still boggles my mind a bit when people say they don’t have a printer at home because there’s a lot of info like trip itineraries I want in hardcopy.
Absolutely. Back in that era printing things was just "what you did" if you wanted some combination of permanent / portable / offline accessible. FSM only knows how many trees I am responsible for killing back in the day, printing stuff that I would never bother printing now. But over time we got more comfortable with not needing everything on paper, and so now...
> It still boggles my mind a bit when people say they don’t have a printer at home
... I am one of those people. I don't own a printer and rarely print anything. On the infrequent occasions when I do want paper copy of something, I just send it to a nearby Fedex Store or UPS Store and have it printed there.
Did we have web forums back then? I know Usenet was a thing.
I remember printing out USENET posts on fan-fold perforated paper that had green and white stipes circa 1990. I think I got rid of all of them when I moved to Germany in 1999 and really pared down my possessions.
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I use https://1dollarscan.com/ if I don't need the physical items back, and use https://www.scancafe.com/ if I do. Those digital files then get ingested into my workflow. (no affiliation, just a customer)
I’ve used scancafe a number of times and actually wrote an early-on review for CNET. One general piece of advice is that before you go crazy, think about what you really care about saving. There’s a cost to scanning of course. There’s also a cost to metadata and other cataloging so that you can actually find what you’ve scanned. For photos everything is in Lightroom with at least a modicum of organization. When my da…
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Ok, but why print it out instead of saving it locally? (Other than to read it on the go? Did people do that?)
I do wonder about the relative cost of paper to digital storage mediums of the time. It could be that would have something to do with it. Take for example the fact that (testing with a 150kb block of lorem ipsum text) you could easily squeeze the text capacity of a 3.5mm floppy into around 20 pages of physical text. 10 sheets of double-side printed paper and some ink might well have been cheaper than the floppy it wo…
Early laser printers were very expensive for the printer but the toner was relatively cheap, and a ream of paper wasn't that expensive, either.