Reading this Alexis Madrigal essay on his early experiences with Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), not only was I reminded of my own experiences with these early digital outposts (I dabbled in this at 1200 bits per second, no freaking kilo- or mega- involved), but of what gets lost when we move to the next big digital thing.
I’ve pointed out before the collective failure to adequately adjust our archival practices and skills to the older digital world. (Not that we’re doing great with the recent digital world, but it’s worse the older you get.) This is a slightly different phenomena than the disappearance of ‘old’ technology that David Edgerton notes in Shock of the Old. There the issue is technology fading into the background. With digital evolution, prior generations may not even leave a digital fossil record. They can truly disappear.
One of the things that can get lost in our inaccessible past is the places where the future might resemble the past. As Madrigal notes, BBS were early social networks. They lacked the reach and sophistication of current giants (many pre-date the Web), but you had the same kinds of opportunities to connect, play, and update. Similarly, the move to cloud computing isn’t all that different from the old setup of mainframes connected to relatively ‘dumb’ workstations at the desk (or as the desk). There’s a difference of scale and portability, but the bulk of the work is stored in a centralized place. It would be worth reviewing records of the old systems to see if there might be things to watch for and/or compare in the new. But if all there is are text files, then digital archaeology is going to be screaming for material.
