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Whoops, the dead media list at Bruce Stirling's Dead Media Project 404s.

Luckilly, Archive.Org is on the case!

Whoops, the dead media list at Bruce Stirling's Dead Media Project 404s.

Luckilly, Archive.Org is on the case!

This story's challenge sounds like a contest held by the Dead Media Project that SF/futurist author Bruce Sterling started in a 1990s mailing list. Though it's really about "extinct media", but Sterling is an SF author.

I'm amused to see that today the DMP itself is down. I hope they've got a backup - and a restore device that works.

I always wanted a desktop cellphone.

Cell phones designed for home use are sort of the 'next big thing,' at least to the cell companies. Each of the 3 major carriers seems to either have one out already, or in the works.

It makes sense -- right now, they've pretty much saturated the market for cell phones: I don't know a man, woman, or child in the U.S. that wants a cell phone that doesn't have one (people who truly can't afford them excepted, although the barrier to entry is getting lower by the month; there are some prepaid phones that verge on being disposable they're so cheap). Once you've put a device in everybody's pocket in the country, where can you go? The logical step is to start chipping away at the other places where they still use non-cell phones. Offices are tough (you have PBXes and complex switching requirements), so instead the carriers are going for the remaining home phones.

To me it seems a bit ironic that the "smart home phone" -- a mythical central-hub unit that does voice, video, and text communication, plus provides news and other information feeds -- which has been a broken promise from wireline phone companies for literally decades, is finally going to be delivered ... only the network behind it will be a wireless one, not POTS, and far from being the local telcos' salvation, it may be the final nail in their coffin. (That is, unless they really get over their reluctance and embrace a future of being bit-pushing broadband ISPs.)

Reuters

Linked to from the references section of this wikipedia article:

Infrared photography

Apparently no one really cares about preserving data.

You're kidding right? The Viking data is often held up as a prime example of data loss through format and equiment obsolecense. I'm surprised you hadn't heard that one.

Around 1999, Dr.J.Miller wanted to have a look through the data and found it couldn't be accessed anymore. Most of what he did get was reassembled from old paper printouts that other reseacher hadn't got around to throwing out yet.

Coincidentally, his research was another case of finding signs of Martian life in the old data.

Here's one version.
http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/50/502.html

http://www.vintagetvsets.com/flash.htm
This is the Zenith Flash-Matic, from 1955. It's a very early remote control... and the first appearance of the mute button. It was designed to 'shoot out' the sound from commercials.
http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/49/497.html

Think this qualifies?

This seems like a good place to mention a repository of media that didn't make it. Hundreds of promising (and not so promising) formats that are now unreadable.

"While at Convex, a Texas-based supercomputer company, Steven Wallach, a computer designer, once used an Alliant supercomputer in his office as a conversation piece and as partial support for his desk. "But even Mr. Wallach (...) said he was surprised to learn that another Convex employee had bought a Convex C-1 for its scrap price and was using the computer to heat his garage."

Bruce Sterling has been thinking about this stuff for some time now.

Have you checked with the folks on the Dead Media List started by Bruce Sterling some years back? http://www.deadmedia.org/

You guys all suck. First place anyone should have looked was The Dead Media Project. A search on dictation turned up this possiblity:

The Recordon, aka the Mail-A-Voice, was a magnetic disc-based dicatation device made in the 50s. It used a paper-based disc (originally; later it used plastic discs) which in theory could be folded, mailed in an envelope, and played back. The media was sold by 3M but not made by them.

A search on DeadMedia for "magnetic disk" also turns up the Timex Magnetic Recorder, though it's believed this was never actually sold.

You guys all suck. First place anyone should have looked was The Dead Media Project. A search on dictation turned up this possiblity:

The Recordon, aka the Mail-A-Voice, was a magnetic disc-based dicatation device made in the 50s. It used a paper-based disc (originally; later it used plastic discs) which in theory could be folded, mailed in an envelope, and played back. The media was sold by 3M but not made by them.

A search on DeadMedia for "magnetic disk" also turns up the Timex Magnetic Recorder, though it's believed this was never actually sold.

Your query is a subset of the problem discussed by Bruce Sterling's Dead Media Project.

Basically, you should transfer to new formats as they arise.

Along similar lines, Tom Jennings has a database of obsolete formats and devices of various kinds, at deadmedia.org.

His site is more focussed on older (nineteenth-century, early twentieth-century) stuff than the EFF site, and of course, not everything dies of regulatory or copyright strangulation.

At least as big a problem of losing these legacy processors is losing the I/O devices that process their data, especially the storage units that read their media. Dead media is a problem catching up with our mediated society, as we data predators starve when our media prey go extinct. Copying legacy data to new media formats before their original formats become obsolete ought to be a required task in the archive process. And IT budgets should reflect that. The cost differential between hosting all old emulated system/data complexes, which is very cheap per datum, and rebuilding obsolete hardware later to recover only the data required in hindsight, favors hosting everything. And the steep increases in newer storage technologies mean that the old data is not only very cheap to store, but can be stored economically and conveniently in distributed copies, ensuring full recovery.

The networked storage itself will make the archiving, hosting, and retrieval process extremely economical. And while older data devalues for a while, beyond the threshold of "living memory" it become increasingly valuable, defining the past. Consider the expense, and value, of recovering even tiny records from as little as 800 years ago. By keeping old data entirely in the actually digital, virtual realm, where it can be be used, rather than in the doomed physical simulations of digital media, we're investing in our future by more accurately remembering our past.

Anyone else remember this from Logitech a while back? I remember Sierra Online was trying to hawk it in their product catalog (disguised as a games magazine) bundled with their games back in the mid-90s, when FPS games were just starting to take off.

Found a review of it here.

Apparently, Logitech even made a second, newer version, as seen here. I had the original, I thought it sucked.

This formed the basis for a method of sending messages for free in years gone by.

"2. The software industry as a whole would suffer. Open standards are nice for interoperability, but not so nice for new development."

There's a time and place for new ideas in software. It's called research and experimentation. Production data and especially public records in government should most definitely be stored in documented, standards-compliant file formats. To see why this is a good idea, see the Dead Media Project. How many of your 20 year old computer files could you retrieve? Got an Apple II Appleworks filter for your office suite?

Even with this law, MS might say "we comply because the Office 2003 file format is XML", but won't do you much good if the namespace and schema are locked up.

"I think I'll go for a walk..."

Quite so; a recent attempt at preserving old media is noted here.

With this in mind, may I direct the attention of budding geek archivists and antiquarians to Bruce Sterling's (and others') Dead Media Project, which seeks to document and analyse the conditions surrounding the life and death of media?

Back in May 2001, there was an article in the NY Times (copy) and Slashdot (also mentioned on DeadMedia.org) about a project to run fiber optics through pneumatic tubes in New York and other big cities. While the meme is out there, it's not clear that anybody's actually implemented it. One problem, besides the financial issues, and the World Trade Center collapse in the most interesting market area, is that real ownership of the tubes is vary unclear, at least in New York City.

Case in point (and very close to my heart): The Dead Media Project. I'm in the business of recovering data from old media, and work with the media, its users, and associated machines every day. Bruce's group, however, seems much more interested in talking about the issues rather than doing anything about them.

It's my impression that many Slashdotters are do-ers rather than talk-ers, and I'm just warning them that there's very little "do-ing" hapenning in Bruce Sterling's circle. That said, maybe there should be more talking going on - but it really doesn't fit my personal style, and either frustrates or infuriates me depending on the issue.

if you look at the kind of signals that we're currently using, sort of spread-spectrum signals and things like that, they're very complicated, and they're completely unlike the kind of things we look for in SETI. The kind of things we look for in SETI are signals that are just what are called narrow-band signals, that are on one spot on the radio dial. [...] The advantage of that is that it makes it really easy to find the signal because all the energy is in a small band so it really stands out as a big spike of energy. Whereas if you spread it out over five megahertz, like a TV signal, then the energy's spread all over the band and it's very hard to find. But on the other hand, the actual signals that we use are spread out, more and more. And ET will be at least as advanced as we are, so you might say, "Well, why would they make those narrow-band signals?" And the answer is, probably: most of the time, they don't. [...] (but) there's lots of things that would have narrow-band components in the signal. So that's what we look for

Let's face it, if EM transmission goes the way of the Napoleonic Semaphore system, then we will not have a chance to intercept the new technology.

First DVD-RAM, then DVD-RW, then DVD+RW... the industry's parade of new and different recordable DVD formats has got to be awfully confusing to consumers. Until this article, I certainly couldn't keep them straight.

The funny thing is that the faster they crank out these new formats, the faster the previous ones become obsolete. We are accumulating dead media at a faster and faster pace. Will anyone own a working DVD-RAM drive in 10 years? Woe to those businesses, individuals or organizations who chose this as their archival medium...

Another Bruce Sterling initiative on-line is the Dead Media Project, qv. It's an attempt to write "a naturalist's field guide for the communications paleontologist." Worth taking a look.

This ties is well with Story of the Pnuematic tubes, a highly developed system that disappeared and became utterly forgotten because of other systems that were utterly superior to it. (Telephones. fax, etc.)

I also am fascinated by the Athenian "computer" that ran the old Athenian democracy. (see info here in 5 parts: 1,2,3,4,5) It was far more IT intensive than most folks realize.

So with these dead sites, etc the question comes to mind: What replaces the internet when it is over?

My vote is that the most likely course is the borgification of the world. Wireless, of course.

But of course, it could be something else as well.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

This ties is well with Story of the Pnuematic tubes, a highly developed system that disappeared and became utterly forgotten because of other systems that were utterly superior to it. (Telephones. fax, etc.)

I also am fascinated by the Athenian "computer" that ran the old Athenian democracy. (see info here in 5 parts: 1,2,3,4,5) It was far more IT intensive than most folks realize.

So with these dead sites, etc the question comes to mind: What replaces the internet when it is over?

My vote is that the most likely course is the borgification of the world. Wireless, of course.

But of course, it could be something else as well.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

This ties is well with Story of the Pnuematic tubes, a highly developed system that disappeared and became utterly forgotten because of other systems that were utterly superior to it. (Telephones. fax, etc.)

I also am fascinated by the Athenian "computer" that ran the old Athenian democracy. (see info here in 5 parts: 1,2,3,4,5) It was far more IT intensive than most folks realize.

So with these dead sites, etc the question comes to mind: What replaces the internet when it is over?

My vote is that the most likely course is the borgification of the world. Wireless, of course.

But of course, it could be something else as well.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

This ties is well with Story of the Pnuematic tubes, a highly developed system that disappeared and became utterly forgotten because of other systems that were utterly superior to it. (Telephones. fax, etc.)

I also am fascinated by the Athenian "computer" that ran the old Athenian democracy. (see info here in 5 parts: 1,2,3,4,5) It was far more IT intensive than most folks realize.

So with these dead sites, etc the question comes to mind: What replaces the internet when it is over?

My vote is that the most likely course is the borgification of the world. Wireless, of course.

But of course, it could be something else as well.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

This ties is well with Story of the Pnuematic tubes, a highly developed system that disappeared and became utterly forgotten because of other systems that were utterly superior to it. (Telephones. fax, etc.)

I also am fascinated by the Athenian "computer" that ran the old Athenian democracy. (see info here in 5 parts: 1,2,3,4,5) It was far more IT intensive than most folks realize.

So with these dead sites, etc the question comes to mind: What replaces the internet when it is over?

My vote is that the most likely course is the borgification of the world. Wireless, of course.

But of course, it could be something else as well.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

The same idea (multiple shots onto monochrome stock via colour filters, recombined at the projection phase) has been independently rediscovered several times, for still and moving images. See, for example, Thomascolor at the Dead Media Project.

My own interest is that a member of my family, Juliet Rhys Williams had her own system, called the Morgana process, which she managed to get Bell & Howell to pilot in the 1930s. Her mother, Elinor Glyn the racy novelist, had connections with Charlie Chaplin, Hearst etc and was able to provide contacts in Bell & Howell to get the project off the ground.

The prototype had a 3-color spinning filter and ran ordinary monochrome stock at triple speed. The projector had a similar filter. When this proved impractically fast for a production model, B&H designed a near-natural colour process involving a two-colour oscillating filter, targeted at amateur (wealthy) home-movie freaks. This went into production and my father remembers using one as a boy in the early 1940s.

Its achilles heel was that the colours could easily go to hell if the film was spliced. But if the 3-colours-on-monochrome Morgana process had become popular instead of colour stock, it would have solved the problem of fading colour movies. It would only be necessary to replace the filters as they faded.

This is probably as good a place as any to mention the Dead Media Project ...
--

• Culture clashes between sub groups in the industry (Mac vs PC, vi vs emacs, MS vs Linux) and the characteristics of the individual subgroups
• Culture Clashes between subgroups in terms of levels of expertise (newbies vs experts vs old timers) as a side note, the phenomena of the "September that never ended" is educational
• Culture clashes with the outside world, this starts touching into the hacker ethis, etc. but also is illustrated in things like comments made to Babbage (along the line of, "if we put in the wrong questions, will it still give us the right answers?")
• The size of some the communities often has been much smaller than would have been imagined from the eventual impact. The original hacker communities in the 1980's did not number thousands, more like a few hundred, with a few dozen core experts. As such, there is often a certain provicialism that creeps in from time to time. The world is often not seen as being as big and diverse as it really is.
• The resemblance of some communities to a religion (Mac evangalism, for example. But there are many others) and the clashes this creates.
• The unsung hereos, people who invented the basic technology, and who never saw a decent return. (I still thing everyone should send the guy who invented the mouse a buck or two just to say "thank you!". This should be a community project of some sort)
• The Dead Media Project, found at deadmedia.org (and as noted earlier here on /.), is an interesting overview on the obsolescence of technology. the articles on the Information technology of ancient Athens are particularly worthwhile. (Seen here in the numeric listing as items 38.6 - 39.0)
• Also, Scientific American had a recent storythat mused about being an information technology worker in Mesopotamia, crunching the numbers that made the cities work.
• The generations of older technologies, including the older tube computers, relay based logic (which is wild in it's own right), and even music technologies such as used by Raymond Scott, (teacher of Robert Moog)

• Culture clashes between sub groups in the industry (Mac vs PC, vi vs emacs, MS vs Linux) and the characteristics of the individual subgroups
• Culture Clashes between subgroups in terms of levels of expertise (newbies vs experts vs old timers) as a side note, the phenomena of the "September that never ended" is educational
• Culture clashes with the outside world, this starts touching into the hacker ethis, etc. but also is illustrated in things like comments made to Babbage (along the line of, "if we put in the wrong questions, will it still give us the right answers?")
• The size of some the communities often has been much smaller than would have been imagined from the eventual impact. The original hacker communities in the 1980's did not number thousands, more like a few hundred, with a few dozen core experts. As such, there is often a certain provicialism that creeps in from time to time. The world is often not seen as being as big and diverse as it really is.
• The resemblance of some communities to a religion (Mac evangalism, for example. But there are many others) and the clashes this creates.
• The unsung hereos, people who invented the basic technology, and who never saw a decent return. (I still thing everyone should send the guy who invented the mouse a buck or two just to say "thank you!". This should be a community project of some sort)
• The Dead Media Project, found at deadmedia.org (and as noted earlier here on /.), is an interesting overview on the obsolescence of technology. the articles on the Information technology of ancient Athens are particularly worthwhile. (Seen here in the numeric listing as items 38.6 - 39.0)
• Also, Scientific American had a recent storythat mused about being an information technology worker in Mesopotamia, crunching the numbers that made the cities work.
• The generations of older technologies, including the older tube computers, relay based logic (which is wild in it's own right), and even music technologies such as used by Raymond Scott, (teacher of Robert Moog)

Seems the idea was in the air, so to speak ...

There's some really fascinating stuff, like delivering carrier pigeons by parachute and, and more absurdly, Vinyl Video.

A great way to spend a couple of hours in nostalgia-land.

There's some really fascinating stuff, like delivering carrier pigeons by parachute and, and more absurdly, Vinyl Video.

A great way to spend a couple of hours in nostalgia-land.

There's some really fascinating stuff, like delivering carrier pigeons by parachute and, and more absurdly, Vinyl Video.

A great way to spend a couple of hours in nostalgia-land.

DeadMedia.org appears to be dead. It is a late website

Has the /. effect ever hit a more ironically named website?