23 Sep
2004
23 Sep
'04
10:34 a.m.
On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, Teo Zenios wrote:
I don't remember advocating keeping every Commodore 64 or every 486 PC
perfectly preserved. We were talking about the value of having
photographs from 1000 years ago. There is a huge difference.
What a boring world that will be, like playing an old game you never seen
with the complete walkthrough in your hands never having to figure anything
out on your own.
You're comparing the importance of our cultural heritage and history to
Zork?
But what is the value in leaving such puzzles for future generations, if
only to give them something to amuse themselves by? Will there not be
word jumbles or crossword puzzles in the future?
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Wow, so
you're arguing that we should lose things so that those that do
remain will be more interesting?!
No, I mean describe the Commodore 64 (as an example) enough so that somebody
might be interested enough to go dig one up and be able to repair it as
needed to run it. If we saved every C64 in mint condition so that people
1000 years from now are tripping over them still, nobody will want to use
one (just like people here today don't even want to look at a common 486 PC
running windows 3.11, but will fall all over themselves to get parts for
machines that are not common). Time along with apathy by the next
generations will end up loosing what we hold dear to us, our job is to leave
enough clues and tell a good enough story that future generations will want
to know more. Do you
really want to document every single thing we treasure about a
specific
machine to the Nth degree so somebody even 20 years from now could
just look
it up as needed,
Well, yes! I find this
idea really strange. So we should intentionally leave
puzzles of the present for the future to decode?!
Yes why not, give them all the pieces and hopefully a few people will put
the puzzle together and test it out. People today have no reason to build
egyptian type pyramids, and we can build them if we wanted to with our
present technology. The Egyptians did leave alot of records on how they were
built and organised but archeologists are still not 100% sure how everything
was done and spend time and effort figuring it out and quite a few people
like reading about the finds and new ideas on how things were done. Our
computers are going to be the pyramids of the 3000's, not needed for their
society (in our crude forms) but a few people will be putting the puzzle
together just to see what we did and why and alot of people will be
interested in reading and contemplating the archeologists findings. It
doesn't have to be intentional. Some of the most basic things we do in life
that are so obvious to us and never documented will puzzle the hell out of
people 1000 years from now.