[cctalk] Re: Seattle’s Living Computers Museum logs off for good as Paul Allen estate will auction vintage items

... Once I let my shock and anger at this settle, I thought of another possibility. Not making any sort of claim that this is how it went, but just throwing it out there. Man people, once they are up close and personal with their mortality, change their perspective dramatically. When Allen realized he didn't have long, maybe what had seemed very important suddenly just seemed a waste of time. Or something similar. I've witnessed that sort of thing quite a few times, and even experienced it personally to some degree. And perhaps to someone with his wealth, that mortality is even more shocking. If you are used to getting anything and everything you want or need at the wave of a hand, realizing you are going to die and can't do a damned thing about it must be a real shock. I'll never know :-) So, maybe, just maybe, he did have that passion to preserve that history. But when he realized he didn't have long, his perspective changed and he just didn't care, whether it was "I just don't care about it any more" or "it's futile to try," either way, he just let it go. As someone (Chuck?) mentioned, many, many things have been lost that are historically significant. Many more will. It's impossible to preserve everything that everyone want to preserve, so it will continue to happen. So perhaps this end result was intentional. We'll probably never know. Would that make it any better? Will