JA Westenberg
@joanwestenberg.eth
By any metric, we're the most documented civilization ever. Future historians should have an unprecedented window into our daily lives, thoughts, and experiences. Right? Right?? https://www.joanwestenberg.com/why-the-internet-era-might-be-historys-least-documented-period/
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AJ
@awedjob.eth
Just read your article. So many thoughts. My wife’s uncle used to work at the Library of Congress. His last big project was digitizing all of the glass slide negatives of Prokudin Gorskii. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/prok/ Color photos taken of Czarist Russia! Previously a collection that only a handful of people in this century had experienced. By scanning and digitally combining the three sections of the glass slide they were able to reconstruct images from a time that we only associate with sepias and black and white. My uncle-in-law took my carefully selected images from the collection and had them printed. I framed a couple that hang in my home right now. When the sun comes up I will send you a photo of them. I have been online since 1984 when my 8th grade science teacher wedged the handset of our school’s telephone line into the mo-dem. I got some cutting edge snippets of Basic for the Apple IIe. Watch War Games with Mathew Broderick to see how that sort of contraption works.
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AJ
@awedjob.eth
Did the ancients contemplate eternity when they carved stories into limestone slabs in the deserts of Egypt? Certainly! Did the Neanderthal woman from 60,000 years ago, who etched notches into a femur to mark the passage of days while she was gathering food for her clan wonder about her own permanence? The only reason why we have a fossil record from the Triassic period is because billions of creatures perished yet only hundreds did so in the ideal conditions to turn their bones to stone. Which then were thrust back up to the surface where we could stumble upon them. Glimpses of shadows and paintings on cave walls. Are we so important that we must preserve our thoughts across time eternal? Which ideas and for how long? I think we are at least as important as that woman from long ago marking the days. I once had a business where I digitized VHS tapes onto HDDs. It is arduous work indeed.
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