28 Oct
2009
28 Oct
'09
10:22 a.m.
>> Are historians going to be interested in
artifacts to this level
>> of
> detail? My (little) experience would say: Not really.
>
As I mentioned, you're probably right with that assumption. But I do NOT
appreciate that...!
I am! I am! :-) My position, that detail is
important, is
premised on the belief that if we are committed to preserving the
history of information technology, we need to preserve the artifacts
as *working* systems.
That's quite important. Dead information technology
equipment is by far
more dead than a big steam engine. So it has to be working. The magic
begins when you turn the key and everything starts blinking and moving.
I also consider peripherals very important.
I sometimes wonder why "some" museum people don't really care about
peripherals. I think a working drum printer is harder to get than some
rusty pdp computers (pdpcount 11, printercount 1)....
UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about
who its friends
are.
I really like that :)