11–20 of 45 posts
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.
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…
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 collections are accessioned they are usually embargoed for some amount of time -- e.g. IIRC 50 years in the case of Harvard.
Also, even though there are 15 or so different email archival software packages, none of them is really fully baked yet, so right now lots of universities are just putting email into longterm storage formats and then they're content to just wait another 10+ years until the email archival software is in a better state before processing them for publication.
If you have good email threads you want to publish on the Internet now though, you can use our tool https://www.fwdeveryone.com.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the value? Honestly I view all of this (digging into someone's personal correspondence from the past) as extremely overly voyeuristic, rather than having actual value. If it wasn't meant to be public originally, I don't want it to be public. It does not respect the original author's intention. (Not trying to be hostile - but I just wanted to say this.)
It's a good question. The reason we know how devastating and inhumane wars like say the Eastern front in WWII is in no small due to these sorts of records, otherwise we'd mostly just have contemporary state propaganda, statistics and the like. Reading about what a meat grinder war is for the grunt on the ground helps future generations a lot more in not repeating those mistakes than so-and-so many millions died. I th…
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…
Most copies, like most old books and most letters, will be destroyed. But some copies of some peoples information will probably live on. Some hard drives and flash memory will be miraculously preserved or whatever for future generations automated electron scanning microscopes to decode.
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…
What is the value? Honestly I view all of this (digging into someone's personal correspondence from the past) as extremely overly voyeuristic, rather than having actual value. If it wasn't meant to be public originally, I don't want it to be public. It does not respect the original author's intention. (Not trying to be hostile - but I just wanted to say this.)
But, if one seeks a consensual compilation by one person, here is a superb one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17032891
I only bust it out on a super chill, lazy day off and read but a few letters at a time, and I'm still only a fraction of the way through it.
Voyeuristic? Probably. I find it a very rare, direct, and valuable transmission of an external being's perspective and senses, though. Candid but consensual.
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…
On the other hand, we are by accident storing vastly more communication than we use to. Many letters I would not have saved, and conversations that would never have even have been recorded are now by default. All it takes is someone finding a copy of them 100 (or 1000) years from now. Most copies, like most old books and most letters, will be destroyed. But some copies of some peoples information will probably live o…
http://www.walterbright.com/trip/chas.html
But the letters my grandmother wrote to him are totally lost.
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…
> 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…