The main problem is that computer researchers don't always write up their ideas in papers. And source code is hard to read, system dependent - you can't underst

The main problem is that computer researchers don't always write up their ideas in papers. And source code is hard to read, system dependent - you can't understand it without being familiar with hardware which may not even exist any more - and may be impossible to access. This isn't really about history. This is about ideas which could still be useful today but which have been forgotten, for a variety of reasons. Most CS departments don't have anyone who specialises in this. And academic historians have other priorities. Calling this dumbing down doesn't help. It's not about historians "dumbing down" CS, it's about not understanding the difference between what historians do - create narratives - and what archivists and researchers do, which is more closely related to continuing research and development. Physics actually has the same problem. Anything outside a limited mainstream is forgotten very quickly. Math seems less prone to it, perhaps because math is made of academic papers and nothing else, and there's more of a tradition of open exploration and communication.