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Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

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Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#71

Post by dsand »

KerrAvon wrote: post #52
linguae wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer: I am a member of the Computer History Museum.) We have the Computer History Museum in Mountain View ( https://computerhistory.org/ ). While unfortunately visitors are not allowed to touch the equipment unlike the Living Computers Museum in Seattle, this is still a wonderful place for people to learn about the history of computing. In addition, the Computer History Museum has many events, often free, wher…

It's definitely too late for LCM -- the heirs don't care about the societal value and are parting it out. It's gone. It'd be super cool if CHM added a living computers wing. They've done a few nice restorations of some large machines, but it's not really the same as something like making a few terminals connected to a PDP-10 directly available to the public. Or some of the early, weird PCs, Unix boxes, Lisp machines.

There are no heirs for LCM. Allen's will specified what do to in particular with a few of his many assets. But for all the rest, he wrote to sell it all, and donate the raised money to charities. So the will's executor (his sister) does not have the latitude to divert some assets to other outcomes.

LCM was never self-sustaining via tickets. It always needed yearly infusions of cash from Allen. Re-opening it as it was would require similar levels of cash to burn. I wish that Allen had loved the LCM enough to design an endowment to keep it going, and had specified in the will how to treat LCM specially. But he did not. What he wanted instead for his legacy, was large cash donations to various charities.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#72

Post by walterbell »

foldor wrote: post #65
RobotToaster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing covid lockdowns crashed their visitor numbers?

Unfortunately not in this case. It's a kind of political issue right now with the current provincial government, and it's looking a lot like greed got in the way since it is in a prime location.

> it is in a prime location

Justifying the adjacent "Science Center" subway station, increasing real estate value of the science museum land. If the land was going to be auctioned to the highest bidder, a tech company consortium could have bid for the opportunity to protect this science student feeder of US/Canada university and industry tech talent.

Instead of Ontario Science Center, why not Apple/Bell/Google/Rogers/Samsung/Shopify or even Toronto Science Center, if that would forestall destruction of a priceless historical landmark? Same principle for the Living Computer Museum, why not Amazon/Microsoft/Valve Living Computer Museum?

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#73

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ghaff wrote: post #41
TMWNN wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt she hates her late brother, any more than any widow who sells off or throws away her late husband's computer collection after his death (which occurs so, so often that it is probably the normal outcome after the collector's death, as opposed to an exception) hates him. It's disinterest.

People get rid of most of the stuff that they inherit, even if it's a "collection" that the relative cared a lot about--especially if it's worth a significant amount of money.

I asked my dad to keep a collection of books for me, about 1.4m x 60cm of bookshelf. They were booked from my mum's family some dating from late 1800s. "They weren't worth anything, I gave them away" ... of course I'm probably the only person to whom they were really worth much. My mum and I shared a love of poetry at one time ...

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#75

Post by tomjakubowski »

bap wrote: post #45
thriftwy wrote: post #42

One thing I didn't notice when travelling to Bay Area is thriving small museum ecosystem. Apparently in the US they prefer to run museums like commercial venues, so either it's a large theme park of a museum, or not at all. I see the news where houses of very notable people like Ray Bradbury[1] sold and scrapped - elsewhere they'd be made a local prodigy of a "house-museum". 1. https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcop…

I think you might find that the larger metropolitan areas are as you say. As one gets away from the coasts and into more rural areas you'll find smaller museums. Museums that are very bespoke and/or focused on a narrower curation target, etc.

Don't think it's city/rural thing or a big city/little city thing. Los Angeles has dozens of tiny museums, often dedicated to obscure subjects (printing, neon art, Jurassic technology), and also some huge and rather well known ones (LACMA, the Getty).

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#76

Post by rvba »

walterbell wrote: post #72
foldor wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately not in this case. It's a kind of political issue right now with the current provincial government, and it's looking a lot like greed got in the way since it is in a prime location.

> it is in a prime location Justifying the adjacent "Science Center" subway station, increasing real estate value of the science museum land. If the land was going to be auctioned to the highest bidder, a tech company consortium could have bid for the opportunity to protect this science student feeder of US/Canada university and industry tech talent. Instead of Ontario Science Center, why not Apple/Bell/Google/Rogers…

Because companies are there to make money, especially those owned mostly by nameless shareholders and run by committee.

And this "brand building" that you describe here has basically zero return on investment.

Of course some company - proablably a private one (not public), could invest into it, but if you want to burn money on something your CEO likes or the owners like, you can use other ideas like paying millions to put your logo on soccer tshirts for hundreds of millions. Or hosting a forum ;)

On a side note, I worked in a company that paid a lot of money for golf sponsorships and couldnt figure out why this "marketing" does not work in countries where nobody plays golf. I think they still havent figured out that there are countries outside of USA.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#77

Post by qludes »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #73
ghaff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get rid of most of the stuff that they inherit, even if it's a "collection" that the relative cared a lot about--especially if it's worth a significant amount of money.

I asked my dad to keep a collection of books for me, about 1.4m x 60cm of bookshelf. They were booked from my mum's family some dating from late 1800s. "They weren't worth anything, I gave them away" ... of course I'm probably the only person to whom they were really worth much. My mum and I shared a love of poetry at one time ...

The sad thing about book collections is that they're not worth buying for book antiquities because chances are that most won't sell at all and the few games might just be worth a few $ so most just end up in the recycling bin once the owner dies. On the other hand that means if you're willing to buy whole shelves filled with books that haven't been preaccessed they can be incredibly cheap.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#79

Post by araes »

Surprising. Visited right before Covid, and it seemed rather popular. Children wandering around playing with exhibits. Would have not expected a place like that to go under. Think every floor had maybe 10? folks while I was there.

Really one of the better hands-on museums with the "lab" component. Had lots of neat digital wall displays to play with, and programmable science toys.

Only downside was location. Tried walking cause I had no idea where it really was, and super-quick realized it was way past the coliseum and almost down to the badlands warehouse district by the freight harbor. Right between the railyards. Bad mental model of Seattle distances. Signage was also really difficult to spot. https://maps.app.goo.gl/SPCCJhT7B9aBfANNA Can you even tell there's a museum there?

Weird part from my own perspective, is Gate's runs a non-profit in his spare time as a hobby(?). Even if they weren't best-bros afterward, it would still take something like finger wagging to a functionary to not have this be a PR dumpster fire.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#80

Post by qludes »

smsm42 wrote: post #29
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #23

Deleted all the social accounts and website offline too? Harsh :-(

We still don't have proper digital preservation mechanisms. If you are an executor of an estate, and you have a website and a twitter account, what you do with them? You are surely not interested in running them by yourself. You can't just leave them alone - website support costs money, and also if left alone, it will inevitably be broken into and cause all kinds of trouble. You can't just sell it to somebody (at lea…

If it's something like a blog archive.org works. And if it's a website people care about it's as simple as giving the archiver/internet historian/data hoarder hobbyist niche to back it all up on ipfs.

If they wrote things you can digitize them and turn them into an epub that might last a few hundred years. And you can absolutely donate a website, that's just a matter of picking the right license and hosting the actual data somewhere, not the actual website.

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