The Ampex Sign Is Coming Down (fastcompany.com)

harrymcc writes: If you ever watched anything on videotape, you have Silicon Valley pioneer Ampex -- which invented the technology -- to thank. And for years, the company's vintage sign has stood alongside Highway 101 as a tribute to its historical significance. But Stanford University, which owns the land the sign sits on, is in the process of dismantling it -- an act which Redwood City could have prevented but didn't. I wrote about this dismaying example of cultural shortsightedness at Fast Company.

Comments

Cultural shortsightedness

[hackertourist]

is a vast overestimate of the sign's importance. It's nothing more than a bloody advertisement, and we need fewer ads in our life, not more.

Re: Cultural shortsightedness

[Nidi62]

There are far more important landmarks that have been destroyed. For over a century, many statues in the Southern United States honoured soldiers who served the Confederate States of America in the Civil War and the Confederate leaders. SJWs got butthurt and destroyed part of our American cultural heritage. We lost far more with the destruction of those statues and desecrated memorials to those soldiers, yet people seem okay with it. This is just a damn sign. It pales in comparison to the statues. Who cares?

Weren't a lot of those statues actually put up in the 40s, 50s, or 60s? Hell, Stone Mountain in Georgia wasn't even completed until 1972! What was the big thing going on around then? Oh, yeah, the Civil Rights Movement. I'm all for statues honoring war dead, but those memorials don't need to be scattered all over the place; they should be in museums, Confederate cemeteries, or parks specifically for the purpose of Civil War remembrance (like Stone Mountain or battlefields). And I say this as a born and bred Southerner that has a history degree and even worked in a Civil War museum. This modern obsession with the Confederacy has gotten out of hand and is all driven by politics.

Re:That's what it is

[jellomizer]

People and organizations do important things all the time, much with a long range impact on the world. But for the most part it will go unnoticed and forgotten in history, say for a vague footnote in a research paper, if lucky.

Also if you are studying the history of something you will often find, that it wasn't made in a vacuum, or out of the blue. However it was an idea built upon previous ideas from different people and organizations.

The Ampex sign, is a local landmark. While Ampex may had done some important innovation, I wouldn't deem it historic, worthy of presentation. Landmarks change. The blue barn was just painted red, The sports stadium had changed sponsors. Just because something is well known or had done important things, doesn't mean it needs to be preserved for prosperity.