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Seriously. It runs contrary to people's intuition, but things we think of as boring now are what historians will care about more than famous, well-preserved, an
by Kye 6y ago
Seriously. It runs contrary to people's intuition, but things we think of as boring now are what historians will care about more than famous, well-preserved, and widely-replicated materials.
The Stoics were always going to survive into the 21st century, but the graffiti on walls would tell you a lot more about the politics and culture of the time than one well-off scholar's view. All those long-gone personal sites are the graffiti on the wall, and we have a copy of a lot of it.
I learn a lot about things I was only vaguely aware of in the '90s from random magazine clippings/media people like Jason Scott and Anatoly Shashkin share.
https://twitter.com/dosnostalgic https://twitter.com/dosnostalgic
https://twitter.com/textfiles https://twitter.com/textfiles
So much of this is in the Internet Archive. Think of what it means to someone 100 years from now trying to piece together an understanding of this era. How much could you find from just 5-10 years ago without it? Most of those websites are offline, the magazines long gone, the companies absorbed into another with no interest in history.