4 ms·

That makes me wonder what could we be doing now that we're not? The time now is just like the time when you were in the lecture at Caltech. I kind of wish we ha

That makes me wonder what could we be doing now that we're not? The time now is just like the time when you were in the lecture at Caltech. I kind of wish we had recorded more of Steve Jobs and wish he was more open for university lectures/presentations. This is their legacy and although we document their story, nothing quite beats audio/video of their own self - as they express grand ideas.

paxys 5y ago
We are still throwing away massive amounts of historical data every day simply because it isn't in any corporation's financial interests to keep it. Efforts like the internet archive have very recently gained steam and are nowhere near enough.
- mhb 5y ago
  Libraries (the putative repositories of this data) have also done more than their share in destroying it: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-double-fold https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-doubl...
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    I spied similar patterns as a student and started collecting books I valued. As a consequence I have some not very valuable but rather rare items that I cherish and couldn’t read anywhere else, even digitally (at least at the time). One example, and probably highly controversial, is “The New Romans”—a collection of essays, poems, aphorisms, and other short writings by every major Canadian writer of the 50s-70s about America including bpNichol, Margaret Atwood, Farley Mowat, Michael Ondaatje, Irving Layton, Margaret Laurence, Dennis Lee (the list goes on and on) edited by Al Purdy (and personally signed by him and Bill Bissett each with a note to someone named Arlene. A monumental undertaking gathering from all of these writers for one edition at the height of their careers. You can still find copies, and affordable, but there was one printing in paperback in 1968 and never again. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23362827-the-new-romans https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23362827-the-new-romans * I’ve invested a lot of money, and lugged them and some vinyl records back and forth across the country with me. Still, I’m wary to pin that on libraries as a whole or as an entity as if the library itself was the problem. The problem is “move fast and break things” and digital maximalism (as the article itself ends up pointing to as a culprit). I’d point to the pressure to install “disruptive” management and those kinds of trend-chasing moves in organizational structure (it’s invaded publishing, too) It’s funny, my day job is working with computers and I love programming and putting computers to good use, but the more I learn and the more I grow the more I prefer the physical world to our new digital one. (As I curse my phone for autocorrecting the wrong words, but still persist in typing this comment) —— * Bonus, here’s a favourite poem from the book by John Robert Columbo https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/oh-canada https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/oh-canada
mhh__ 5y ago
Although I don't really consider a lot of what we (programmers) do engineering, it does make me happy that we do is documented reasonably thoroughly if it's open source. There's so much brilliant work of the past only accessible in either archives or spoken word, whereas code can at least be preserved as-is.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  What I love about Github is not only having archival storage in the cloud, but all the forks are copies on individuals' computers. git may turn out to be a far more valuable invention than Linus ever imagined.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    The distributed aspect was a goal from day 1

paxys 5y ago

We are still throwing away massive amounts of historical data every day simply because it isn't in any corporation's financial interests to keep it. Efforts like the internet archive have very recently gained steam and are nowhere near enough.

mhb 5y ago
Libraries (the putative repositories of this data) have also done more than their share in destroying it: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-double-fold https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-doubl...
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  I spied similar patterns as a student and started collecting books I valued. As a consequence I have some not very valuable but rather rare items that I cherish and couldn’t read anywhere else, even digitally (at least at the time). One example, and probably highly controversial, is “The New Romans”—a collection of essays, poems, aphorisms, and other short writings by every major Canadian writer of the 50s-70s about America including bpNichol, Margaret Atwood, Farley Mowat, Michael Ondaatje, Irving Layton, Margaret Laurence, Dennis Lee (the list goes on and on) edited by Al Purdy (and personally signed by him and Bill Bissett each with a note to someone named Arlene. A monumental undertaking gathering from all of these writers for one edition at the height of their careers. You can still find copies, and affordable, but there was one printing in paperback in 1968 and never again. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23362827-the-new-romans https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23362827-the-new-romans * I’ve invested a lot of money, and lugged them and some vinyl records back and forth across the country with me. Still, I’m wary to pin that on libraries as a whole or as an entity as if the library itself was the problem. The problem is “move fast and break things” and digital maximalism (as the article itself ends up pointing to as a culprit). I’d point to the pressure to install “disruptive” management and those kinds of trend-chasing moves in organizational structure (it’s invaded publishing, too) It’s funny, my day job is working with computers and I love programming and putting computers to good use, but the more I learn and the more I grow the more I prefer the physical world to our new digital one. (As I curse my phone for autocorrecting the wrong words, but still persist in typing this comment) —— * Bonus, here’s a favourite poem from the book by John Robert Columbo https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/oh-canada https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/oh-canada

mhh__ 5y ago

Although I don't really consider a lot of what we (programmers) do engineering, it does make me happy that we do is documented reasonably thoroughly if it's open source. There's so much brilliant work of the past only accessible in either archives or spoken word, whereas code can at least be preserved as-is.

WalterBright 5y ago
What I love about Github is not only having archival storage in the cloud, but all the forks are copies on individuals' computers. git may turn out to be a far more valuable invention than Linus ever imagined.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  The distributed aspect was a goal from day 1