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I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
31–40 of 227 posts
Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
#32I was in Google Patent Litigation, and we actively collected old stuff, for possible use as prior art. I even went to Beryl Nelson's house before she died to collect her old Bell System Technical Journals. A lot of old stuff has no value to anyone. That can be hard to accept, but it's true. Even old wood furniture -- no one wants it. Old PC or Byte Magazines? Forget it; they're all over.
It’s a new phenomenon that culture is still absorbing, a result of abundance and progress.
Old furniture used to be handed down and treasured for generations. Suddenly, not anymore.
Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why did they take the material? If you don’t want it, then don’t take it.
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> Again however, that misses the point. What is this obsession with the past and the early days of computing?
Those who ignore the past waste a lot of time re-inventing the already invented.
Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the original post he mentions that he purchased the containers specifically for the purpose of the donation, so it's likely that the containers sat full for years after being donated and were only incidentally re-used. He also mentions that the person who originally accepted the donation was pushed out of the VCF organization, and did not have a say in the material being disposed of. There is a possibility here th…
That's an interesting ethical question. I am tempted to agree that there generally is. You can argue that the giving of a gift is a final act, that the gifted item belongs to the recipient now, and that since you're morally free to do whatever you want with what belongs to you, you are free to do with the gift as you please, including tossing it out. But gifting is imbued with meaning beyond the mere transfer of owne…
> You can argue that the giving of a gift is a final act, that the gifted item belongs to the recipient now, and that since you're morally free to do whatever you want with what belongs to you, you are free to do with the gift as you please, including tossing it out.
Gifts/donations can be conditional, subject to conditions. If someone donates $1 million to a university to fund scholarships for disadvantaged students, and the university instead decides to spend it all on first class air travel for university executives, that would in many jurisdictions be illegal (a breach of trust).
If someone donates an item to a museum, I would say the museum has at least a moral obligation to contact the donor and ask them if they want to take it back before throwing it out.
Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What is this obsession with the past and the early days of computing? Sure, no need to study history. Just pull to refresh every second and don't remember anything. And also, defund the national archives too, they are apparently useless. /s
No this group wastes so much time trying to relive the 70's and 80's they're missing an even greater paradigm shift unfolding right here and now. Someone has to say enough with the tinkering already. It's a waste of time. Yesterday's people are dead. Not relevant - dead and gone. That party's over, move on. This is not healthy
> No this group wastes so much time trying to relive the 70's and 80's they're missing an even greater paradigm shift
"if you only knew." - Guy who did his capstone project on neural networks and computer vision in the 80s.
Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
#36Why would you take all this stuff only to toss it all out? Though to he fair, it seems the person that took it was pushed out and replaced? In which case, why, if you do not take this stuff, would you work for a VCF?
Getting rid of books is part of running a library, I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of thing is part of running a museum or similar organization. That said, there are so many collectors out there I feel it would be better to at least try to find a home, even if it means selling them. It's easy for me to say that because I don't have to actually do it.
Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
#37I was in Google Patent Litigation, and we actively collected old stuff, for possible use as prior art. I even went to Beryl Nelson's house before she died to collect her old Bell System Technical Journals. A lot of old stuff has no value to anyone. That can be hard to accept, but it's true. Even old wood furniture -- no one wants it. Old PC or Byte Magazines? Forget it; they're all over.
Seems reasonable enough! But if that's your take, I recommend not accepting 15 crates of material Jason Scott drives 70 miles from his house to hand off to you, unless you're looking to get Internet Famous.
Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
#38The real question is whether these journals were already scanned and archived or not.
We shouldn't throw away the physical paper copies just because something has been scanned. In any large collection of scanned documents, you are going to get scanning errors/etc – you can catch a lot of these with quality control, but some will always slip through the cracks. (And, volunteer efforts to scan old computer documentation often don't have the time and resources for the best quality control.) If the original paper copy is still in existence, someone can always go back and rescan it again later. If all the paper copies are gone, that is impossible.
Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
#39Wouldn't the authors or publishers have the original copies somewhere?
Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an Art of Manliness podcast that talks about this: https://www.artofmanliness.com/lifestyle/homeownership/declu... It really opened my eyes to the fact that most of what you value or hold dear will have no value to others, especially if it can't be resold. As a practical minimalist (rather than a strict one) it's informed my personal practices a fair bit.
I like going to estate sales. Sometimes you find interesting things. But mostly, it's just piles of, frankly, crap. And in a weird way, it's sort of helping me deal with some of my tendencies to collect crap. Once I'm dead, 75% of it will be thrown away by someone hired to deal with the estate, maybe 50% of the rest will be sold, and the rest will once again go in the garbage. That screwdriver I'm keeping even though…
When my hoarder FIL died, we had to have a cleanup company deal with his apartment - we asked them to set aside anything of value and got back one bankers box of old utility bills, canceled checks, a laptop. In reality, since those things held the clues to tracking down the bits of his estate, they probably were worth more than any revered artifact.