The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime • Hacker News Board

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#21

Post by hos234 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:12 AM UTC

avar wrote: post #2

I wonder if by moving to digital communications we won't paradoxically be leaving a black hole for future historians when it comes to such records. I.e. now what would previously have been letters from the front might be sent as a text, phone call or E-Mail. Dead people don't pay for advertising revenue, so that data's likely being deleted soon after they're gone, or when their phone dies. Yes some of these services…

They are busy chatting about airstrikes on WhatsApp these days so I am guessing email is passe - https://www.wired.com/story/the-first-smartphone-war/

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#22

Post by Alex3917 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:12 AM UTC

est31 wrote: post #20

Alex3917 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I.e. now what would previously have been letters from the front might be sent as a text, phone call or E-Mail. There are hundreds of email archivists working at universities across the country. The reason you don't hear about them is that email didn't exist until ~1971, universities don't accession email collections until either after someone dies or at least until relatively late in their career, and once collecti…

E-Mails are fairly easy to archive. What about Whatsapp, Slack, etc? Shared Google documents? You need to create archivers for each of these apps, or at least the apps where the "important" communication is happening over.

> E-Mails are fairly easy to archive.

I mean unless you think the value of the knowledge contained within email is obviously less than the value that will be unlocked by self-driving cars, it stands to reason that solving the problem may not actually be any less complicated.

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#23

Post by 40four » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:33 AM UTC

hi41 wrote: post #17

Wow. That amazingly beautiful cursive handwriting. Compared to that, mine is like a chicken’s scratching on the dirt, as they say in India.

Unrelated to the post, but I find it beautiful that a colloquial phrase 'they say in India', has a sort of global recognition to me growing up in the United States.

We used to call poor handwriting 'chicken scratch' for fun all the time when I was a kid. I would know because my handwriting has always been horrible. I was always jealous of people who had pretty handwriting :)

I'm sure this is a term people in many other countries would recognize, I wonder what other coloquialisms have this sort of widespread recognition?

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#24

Post by jcims » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:43 AM UTC

grepthisab wrote: post #16

Can we run ML over these and create synthetic letters written during wartime?

Of course. It might be something that actually binds humanity together in singular, syncretistic opposition.

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#25

Post by jcims » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:50 AM UTC

avar wrote: post #2

I wonder if by moving to digital communications we won't paradoxically be leaving a black hole for future historians when it comes to such records. I.e. now what would previously have been letters from the front might be sent as a text, phone call or E-Mail. Dead people don't pay for advertising revenue, so that data's likely being deleted soon after they're gone, or when their phone dies. Yes some of these services…

It probably does so more than is immediately obvious. If you look at a letter or postcard or journal, there's a physically atomic and generally sufficient representation of the content. They contain the who/what/when/where/why of the story and, if discovered in the future generally persist in a complete state.

With digital communications, this is generally not going to be the case. If someone unearths an Amazon datacenter and starts poring over the content stored in flash drives, they are going to just find volumes and volumes of raided/sharded/indexed/normalized/encrypted content that mixes presentation with prose and reads like someone quickly twisting the dial on an old analog radio.

Most of the content we see now is emergent from the system that stewards it and is only accessible when it's in operation.

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#26

Post by defen » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:16 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

AcerbicZero wrote: post #6

My family recently found a USO record my grandfather had recorded from somewhere in South-East China during WW2, which after digitizing myself we've donated to a WW2 historical society. Documentation from these events are critical to helping explain the context and the people who were actually involved in these events.

Please consider submitting the digital version to the Internet Archive as an item.

Any more details about how/where to do this? My grandmother recently passed, and as we were going through her things we found a large amount of V-mail that my grandfather sent to her during WWII. I'd love to preserve it, although I don't know if I'm ready to send the physical items anywhere yet.

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#27

Post by toomuchtodo » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:21 AM UTC

defen wrote: post #26

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please consider submitting the digital version to the Internet Archive as an item.

Any more details about how/where to do this? My grandmother recently passed, and as we were going through her things we found a large amount of V-mail that my grandfather sent to her during WWII. I'd love to preserve it, although I don't know if I'm ready to send the physical items anywhere yet.

For digital artifacts, https://archive.org/create/ (you’ll need to create an archive.org account) is where items can be created.

If you only have physical artifacts, I recommend scanning at 600 dpi for digital artifact creation prior to uploading to the Internet Archive.

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#28

Post by chrisweekly » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:51 AM UTC

jcims wrote: post #25

avar wrote: post #2

I wonder if by moving to digital communications we won't paradoxically be leaving a black hole for future historians when it comes to such records. I.e. now what would previously have been letters from the front might be sent as a text, phone call or E-Mail. Dead people don't pay for advertising revenue, so that data's likely being deleted soon after they're gone, or when their phone dies. Yes some of these services…

It probably does so more than is immediately obvious. If you look at a letter or postcard or journal, there's a physically atomic and generally sufficient representation of the content. They contain the who/what/when/where/why of the story and, if discovered in the future generally persist in a complete state. With digital communications, this is generally not going to be the case. If someone unearths an Amazon datac…

> "If someone unearths an Amazon datacenter and starts poring over the content stored in flash drives, they are going to just find volumes and volumes of raided/sharded/indexed/normalized/encrypted content that mixes presentation with prose and reads like someone quickly twisting the dial on an old analog radio."

+1 for the terrific analogy!

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#29

Post by ISL » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:51 AM UTC

est31 wrote: post #20

Alex3917 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I.e. now what would previously have been letters from the front might be sent as a text, phone call or E-Mail. There are hundreds of email archivists working at universities across the country. The reason you don't hear about them is that email didn't exist until ~1971, universities don't accession email collections until either after someone dies or at least until relatively late in their career, and once collecti…

E-Mails are fairly easy to archive. What about Whatsapp, Slack, etc? Shared Google documents? You need to create archivers for each of these apps, or at least the apps where the "important" communication is happening over.

That is one of the key reasons not to use the chat-like apps. Hard to search, hard to back up, hard to thread...

Re: The effort to preserve a million letters written by U.S. soldiers during wartime

#30

Post by Alex3917 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:05 AM UTC

ISL wrote: post #29

est31 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E-Mails are fairly easy to archive. What about Whatsapp, Slack, etc? Shared Google documents? You need to create archivers for each of these apps, or at least the apps where the "important" communication is happening over.

That is one of the key reasons not to use the chat-like apps. Hard to search, hard to back up, hard to thread...

This. Every time you send a message in one of those apps, it's like taking a $20 bill and lighting it on fire.

I'll admit they have their uses, and hopefully they'll get better over time. But given their current state, if you don't place any value on what you're saying then why even say it in the first place?