[00:00.000 --> 00:06.380]  I would like to present Jason Scott's strange and wonderful digital history argosy.
[00:06.560 --> 00:07.460]  Jason Scott, everyone.
[00:12.750 --> 00:15.510]  So this thing is actually working on the first try.
[00:15.790 --> 00:17.050]  Congratulations, sound dude.
[00:17.230 --> 00:17.690]  Thank you.
[00:22.460 --> 00:28.340]  I've done a lot of talks, and believe me, you start to feel blessed for anything that works the first time.
[00:28.880 --> 00:31.480]  So, wow, I can barely see you for all the things.
[00:31.580 --> 00:32.720]  If I step out here, does it get bad?
[00:33.240 --> 00:36.760]  How many people here have never been to a Jason Scott talk before?
[00:37.560 --> 00:39.140]  It's a small smattering of you.
[00:39.320 --> 00:40.120]  Jesus, what are you doing?
[00:40.220 --> 00:41.500]  Johannes Grenzfurthner is in the other room.
[00:42.140 --> 00:42.360]  Alright.
[00:42.660 --> 00:43.660]  And how many people have been?
[00:44.440 --> 00:47.480]  Because I've learned to ask both, because some of you people are lazy.
[00:49.480 --> 00:49.880]  Lazy.
[00:50.300 --> 00:51.600]  Hello, my name is Jason Scott.
[00:51.760 --> 00:52.380]  Lives changed.
[00:52.520 --> 00:53.240]  Paradigms shifted.
[00:54.000 --> 00:58.600]  If you came to this talk, that's very interesting, because the description is terrible.
[01:00.740 --> 01:03.860]  That means you're a person who's like, oh, surely this is going to be insane.
[01:04.220 --> 01:05.320]  I think I'll do this.
[01:05.400 --> 01:08.460]  And so, of course, you ask the first question is, what the f*ck is an Argosy?
[01:10.520 --> 01:14.800]  So it's probably not a flotilla of ships, probably not a large marine, but it is an opulent supply.
[01:15.780 --> 01:18.220]  I'm going to jump through a bunch of concepts right now.
[01:18.420 --> 01:21.040]  A bunch of things about me, a bunch about what I'm going up to.
[01:21.160 --> 01:23.360]  I've been speaking at HOPE now for about 10 years.
[01:23.780 --> 01:25.500]  I've been having a wonderful time at it.
[01:25.500 --> 01:28.840]  And I'm glad that, somehow, the hotel pen never seems to find a buyer.
[01:28.840 --> 01:32.100]  And once again, we get the five-star lobby and the one-star rooms.
[01:38.360 --> 01:46.020]  Now, every time I give one of these talks, or I talk like this, or I use this particular paradigm of talk, there's always somebody who's like, he seemed really light on the technical details.
[01:46.600 --> 01:48.100]  Just get the f*ck out now, nerd.
[01:49.880 --> 01:51.920]  Because that's not going to happen a whole lot, okay?
[01:52.620 --> 01:57.360]  I'm dedicating this talk tonight to NIGHTSTALKER of the CDC, who sadly left us a couple of weeks ago.
[01:58.080 --> 01:59.620]  The man was hardcore to the end.
[01:59.740 --> 02:07.660]  He was a member of the Youth International Party Line, got involved in TAP, then followed 2600 up, and became a proud member of the Cult of the Dead Cow.
[02:09.160 --> 02:13.200]  And we just had a little drink in his name just a little while ago, so goodbye, Chris.
[02:14.360 --> 02:23.500]  A lot of this talk is kind of in the same area as Brett Victor's Inventing on Principle, which is a talk that just came out this year, which I really recommend you look at.
[02:23.720 --> 02:28.020]  In it, he's basically talking about shifting one's life towards priorities.
[02:28.280 --> 02:37.600]  He then gives some incredible tech demos to completely confuse and confound the audience, that there's some cool tech, then goes right back to say, actually, it's much bigger than all this.
[02:37.660 --> 02:40.120]  It's much bigger than these cute tech demos.
[02:40.280 --> 02:42.080]  I am creating things according to a purpose.
[02:42.080 --> 02:43.600]  Not because of passion.
[02:43.880 --> 02:50.160]  Not because I'm trying to change the world's outlook into something that will make me rich.
[02:50.440 --> 02:51.900]  But just, let's do some things.
[02:52.180 --> 02:57.600]  So, Brett Victor, because if you listen to this and you've heard that talk, you're going to go... like that.
[02:59.180 --> 03:01.360]  I run a site called textfiles.com.
[03:01.540 --> 03:03.820]  I've been running this site now for about 14 years.
[03:07.080 --> 03:09.460]  The newbies in the audience are either, oh my god, it's that guy.
[03:09.460 --> 03:12.360]  Or, what the f*ck is textfiles.com?
[03:12.740 --> 03:18.200]  Textfiles.com is a site dedicated to Bulletin Board Systems, which was this thing.
[03:18.320 --> 03:24.160]  It was a computer with a fat guy behind it that would use a phone to connect to another computer with a fat guy behind it.
[03:25.300 --> 03:27.100]  It was very popular, I promise you.
[03:27.180 --> 03:27.960]  It was really kind of cool.
[03:28.760 --> 03:33.220]  And I've been running this site now for about 14 years, like I said, since I was 28.
[03:33.480 --> 03:34.540]  And I'm 41 now.
[03:34.760 --> 03:39.060]  And I did it because, at the time, I was worried.
[03:39.060 --> 03:42.660]  I was worried we weren't going to have this history that I had gained as a child.
[03:43.380 --> 03:44.980]  And that it was going to disappear.
[03:45.200 --> 03:49.120]  So I was worried, and so I put as much of it up as I could.
[03:49.120 --> 03:51.420]  It became a honeypot for other people to give it to me.
[03:51.580 --> 03:55.400]  And from that, the rest of my projects have all come from the textfiles.com.
[03:55.560 --> 03:57.500]  My address is jason.textfiles.com.
[03:57.500 --> 03:58.660]  I want your old shit.
[04:00.000 --> 04:03.220]  I've been speaking, like I said, at HOPE, with really kind of unusual costumes.
[04:03.500 --> 04:07.240]  For whatever reason, this one seems to be the one that everybody uses with me.
[04:07.360 --> 04:10.380]  It was just when I decided to be ironically steampunk.
[04:11.400 --> 04:15.660]  Don't be ironically anything, because it turns out you are that thing, as far as people are concerned.
[04:16.860 --> 04:19.240]  I literally have people who think I go around like this all day.
[04:20.200 --> 04:20.860]  So anyway.
[04:22.280 --> 04:28.160]  And of course, like I said, if you're going to speak about anything, speak about it with a kangaroo hide hat.
[04:28.160 --> 04:31.200]  Because that says, I know history.
[04:32.460 --> 04:33.260]  So beginnings.
[04:33.800 --> 04:34.740]  There's me and Dad.
[04:35.960 --> 04:45.880]  So I was born in 1970, which means that I'm just past the mainframe era, and beginning the era of the micro, by the time I'm relatively cognizant of the Earth.
[04:46.180 --> 04:48.060]  And my father worked for IBM.
[04:48.060 --> 04:50.300]  He liked to take me in to look at things.
[04:50.360 --> 04:53.680]  And so I got exposed to computers at a very early age.
[04:54.040 --> 04:54.920]  And I liked them.
[04:54.980 --> 05:02.860]  Here's me at 11, posing, as one might pose with a celebrity, next to the apple cube in Cupertino.
[05:02.860 --> 05:11.980]  So like I said, I was about 11 or 12 here, and I made my father stop the car so I could pose in my aviator glasses next to the apple cube.
[05:12.420 --> 05:14.820]  So I've had a long, loving history with this.
[05:16.200 --> 05:16.640]  And...
[05:18.560 --> 05:19.980]  So here's the thing, right?
[05:20.220 --> 05:24.180]  So a lot of people have been like, where did this all come from?
[05:24.180 --> 05:37.660]  And as far as I can determine, it came from the night that my mother came to me at like 2 in the morning, and explained we had to leave the house right now, because she was leaving my father, to grab what was useful, and to leave.
[05:38.600 --> 05:42.600]  It turns out what's useful to an 8-year-old is a dog in a blanket.
[05:43.760 --> 05:54.000]  But, it meant that at a very early age, I learned a very important lesson, which is nothing is permanent, everything is transient, everything you depend on could be gone tomorrow.
[05:54.240 --> 05:58.420]  So either enjoy it, or keep a lot of it, because it's going to disappear.
[05:59.020 --> 06:02.840]  Not every kid gets this lesson until later in life, but I got it very early.
[06:03.080 --> 06:14.540]  So when I was on computer bulletin board systems, I would go on to these places, and then download as much of the data as I could, because as it turns out, a lot of it was illegal, and they were deleted very soon afterwards.
[06:16.760 --> 06:20.400]  There's pros and cons to be one of the best sources of bombs information on the Internet.
[06:20.660 --> 06:30.180]  But, one thing that I have on there is all of these one-time computer bulletin boards, these moments in time, these online butterflies that just disappear and die.
[06:30.420 --> 06:34.580]  And I picked them up because I was afraid they'd be gone.
[06:35.200 --> 06:37.000]  And when people say, like, what's your success?
[06:37.120 --> 06:40.320]  And my success is, early tragedy equals success.
[06:41.420 --> 06:44.480]  So, it just, you know, sometimes people try to figure out, like, what's wrong with you?
[06:44.600 --> 06:44.820]  What's wrong with you?
[06:44.880 --> 06:45.720]  I'm like, there you go.
[06:45.860 --> 06:46.640]  Could be gone.
[06:49.100 --> 06:55.160]  So, in my room, believe it or not, I have this, which is my original computer I ever learned on.
[06:55.400 --> 07:05.580]  A Commodore PET, which is an 8K cassette-based machine that I have kept with me all of my life.
[07:05.580 --> 07:10.180]  Because I did not, I got it, I got to keep it, and I didn't let it go away.
[07:10.280 --> 07:14.420]  Now, for a moment there, some of you were like, yeah, that's nice, but what the f*ck is up with that room?
[07:16.060 --> 07:17.180]  So, this is my room.
[07:17.940 --> 07:19.660]  This is where I spend a lot of my days.
[07:20.080 --> 07:21.240]  Again, I'm 41.
[07:21.980 --> 07:27.040]  And so, over in the back there, you know, this is the computer ingestion section.
[07:27.040 --> 07:27.820]  This is media.
[07:28.100 --> 07:30.360]  Over here is the main terminal for the input.
[07:30.360 --> 07:32.520]  On the left here, we won't talk about that.
[07:32.680 --> 07:35.300]  On the right over here, this is the living space.
[07:35.820 --> 07:38.840]  This is the filming space, and over here is a work table.
[07:39.160 --> 07:41.240]  So, wow, that's a lot of stuff, Jason.
[07:41.320 --> 07:42.480]  You should find a place for it.
[07:45.510 --> 07:46.750]  I found a place for it.
[07:48.170 --> 07:49.270]  So, there's my brother.
[07:50.950 --> 07:53.610]  Utterly nonplussed that I am about to put this on his property.
[07:57.720 --> 08:05.660]  So, if you need a place, storage, shipping containers, New York hasn't made it legal to marry them, but when they do, I'm going to marry this one.
[08:05.740 --> 08:07.760]  Because this thing is awesome.
[08:08.300 --> 08:09.220]  This thing is awesome.
[08:09.360 --> 08:11.300]  It's 40 feet by 8 by 8.
[08:11.400 --> 08:14.540]  It still has Chinese markings from when it used to sell clothes inside of it.
[08:14.960 --> 08:16.040]  And I love it.
[08:16.100 --> 08:18.200]  And inside of it, I've been putting lots more crap.
[08:19.180 --> 08:20.200]  This is a lie.
[08:20.400 --> 08:21.400]  This is actually when I first loaded.
[08:21.540 --> 08:22.280]  It looks more like this.
[08:25.270 --> 08:27.190]  This one's for my parents.
[08:27.450 --> 08:28.710]  This one's what it's like.
[08:28.910 --> 08:29.670]  Anyway, so...
[08:30.730 --> 08:40.550]  And in this thing, I have been putting tons and tons of computer equipment, software, pieces of paper that I thought were important.
[08:40.930 --> 08:46.350]  Things I have in here include an entire collection of the original Gnu Foundation 9-Track tapes.
[08:46.350 --> 08:56.490]  I have almost every computer proceedings document and just tons and tons and tons of CDs and magazines.
[08:56.910 --> 08:58.270]  So, here's some being done.
[08:59.110 --> 09:04.110]  Just for some of you who know about this part of my life, that is the most famous cat on the Internet on Twitter.
[09:08.070 --> 09:11.210]  Really, this is really just like, let's see what the f*ck the Sockington guy is up to.
[09:11.790 --> 09:12.610]  Alright, well, I'll take it.
[09:12.690 --> 09:13.930]  Twitter.com slash Sockington.
[09:13.930 --> 09:16.150]  If you're like, wow, a cat has a million followers on Twitter?
[09:16.810 --> 09:17.190]  Yeah.
[09:18.290 --> 09:18.670]  Great.
[09:19.010 --> 09:21.230]  Anyway, so, I love CDs.
[09:21.550 --> 09:25.490]  I think CDs are the most important thing in the world in terms of that period of time.
[09:25.870 --> 09:39.510]  Because at a time when it was so expensive to buy a 10 megabyte hard drive, these 640 megabyte pieces of plastic ensured, A, that once you got the hang of the manufacturer, they were cheap, but you could sell them for many, many more times their value.
[09:39.510 --> 09:42.310]  And B, they ran out of shit to stack on them.
[09:42.930 --> 09:50.970]  This means that they had to go to bulletin board systems, to online sites, to USENET, to anything they could find to sell any product that they could find.
[09:51.230 --> 09:56.310]  And so they became unwittingly anthropologists of this history.
[09:56.590 --> 09:57.930]  I love them so much.
[09:58.010 --> 10:00.090]  People send them to me all the time.
[10:00.250 --> 10:02.610]  So this is just stuff that I am constantly getting.
[10:02.770 --> 10:04.810]  Here's a whole bunch of PC Gamer cover discs.
[10:05.030 --> 10:06.310]  And you're like, that's really extreme.
[10:06.310 --> 10:11.930]  But the first rule of collecting is for every time you think you're extreme, there's always somebody more extreme than you.
[10:12.630 --> 10:19.130]  What I love about this particular one is the left side is the in-pile and the right side is the out-pile.
[10:19.790 --> 10:20.570]  Thanks, buddy.
[10:20.870 --> 10:23.370]  All these people were sending me in these disc images.
[10:23.370 --> 10:26.310]  And we have been able to find, like, real treasures in there.
[10:26.490 --> 10:28.630]  And I happen to believe that it doesn't...
[10:28.630 --> 10:32.010]  The hardest part about history is collecting it when it happens.
[10:32.650 --> 10:35.150]  That's the part that's just really crazy.
[10:35.150 --> 10:41.390]  And so when you have all this stuff available, that's when we can start to really, like, learn from them.
[10:41.530 --> 10:44.490]  So I am a big fan of not asking people to sort.
[10:44.730 --> 10:46.690]  People say, I want to send you stuff, but I want to go through it.
[10:46.710 --> 10:47.690]  And I'm like, no, no, no.
[10:48.170 --> 10:48.970]  Send it here.
[10:49.390 --> 10:51.930]  The robot overlords will deal with it in just a few years.
[10:54.130 --> 10:56.590]  This is, again, Len Tower Jr.'s collection.
[10:56.590 --> 11:00.090]  This is the Gnu Foundation, circa 1984.
[11:00.090 --> 11:01.770]  And I got it.
[11:01.950 --> 11:04.470]  So it turns out that it all fits into one truck.
[11:04.930 --> 11:08.770]  But the thing is, is that all Len said was, I want to clear out my barn.
[11:10.070 --> 11:13.250]  And people were like, you know, he said, I have some bite magazines.
[11:13.390 --> 11:17.750]  And people were asking him for this issue of bite because it was very valuable.
[11:17.990 --> 11:20.430]  And could I have this piece of equipment because it's valuable?
[11:20.470 --> 11:23.510]  And I was the only one who said, I'll be by with the truck tonight.
[11:25.250 --> 11:26.450]  So I won.
[11:26.750 --> 11:27.870]  That's how that works.
[11:28.130 --> 11:28.710]  All right.
[11:32.160 --> 11:38.140]  We are so prepared to piece crap out from the vine right there instead of just saying, I'll deal with it.
[11:40.600 --> 11:42.840]  So what the hell is this, Jason?
[11:43.080 --> 11:48.720]  This is a box I've never opened that I am shipping away, that I shipped away at that date.
[11:48.720 --> 11:52.120]  This is the world's largest Saved by the Bell collection.
[11:54.540 --> 11:57.480]  I was going to write a story on this and never got around to it.
[11:57.500 --> 11:58.420]  So now you're hearing about it now.
[11:58.800 --> 12:03.140]  Basically, on eBay, somebody offered the world's largest Saved by the Bell collection.
[12:03.160 --> 12:07.540]  The comprehensive collection of all aspects of Saved by the Bell.
[12:08.280 --> 12:08.800]  Everything.
[12:08.980 --> 12:15.780]  We're talking about all of the shows, any fan magazines, stickers, posters, anything associated with it.
[12:15.780 --> 12:16.900]  And I bought it.
[12:17.940 --> 12:22.200]  And I was fascinated that now I was the owner of the world's largest Saved by the Bell collection.
[12:22.920 --> 12:27.380]  I held my crown firmly as I never opened this box and kept it for five years.
[12:28.260 --> 12:30.720]  Finally, I'm on a cruise for the singer Jonathan Colton.
[12:31.080 --> 12:37.220]  And I'm talking to somebody and I mention, as an aside to someone, yeah, I happen to have the world's largest Saved by the Bell collection.
[12:37.520 --> 12:38.980]  Oh yeah, I was getting laid that night.
[12:39.180 --> 12:44.220]  And a guy next to me said, oh, I could use that.
[12:44.360 --> 12:45.080]  And I said, why?
[12:45.080 --> 12:49.160]  And it turned out he had run one of the largest Saved by the Bell fan sites.
[12:50.520 --> 12:51.700]  So a deal was struck.
[12:51.920 --> 12:54.280]  I would give it to him and he would never give it back.
[12:56.580 --> 12:58.000]  And off it went to the mail.
[12:58.140 --> 13:01.040]  So I've never looked in that box.
[13:01.320 --> 13:02.840]  I hope he had a wonderful time.
[13:02.960 --> 13:03.760]  We've never talked again.
[13:05.800 --> 13:07.200]  That's called saving history.
[13:09.260 --> 13:11.140]  This is also something very interesting.
[13:11.880 --> 13:16.300]  These are all of the legal papers of the EFF's 2600 case.
[13:18.200 --> 13:24.840]  When Emmanuel found out that the EFF was going to throw it out because it had been ten years, he came to me.
[13:26.260 --> 13:27.180]  And I took them.
[13:28.800 --> 13:31.600]  I didn't have a place for them because they came randomly.
[13:31.780 --> 13:37.680]  It turned out, just due to an oversight, when I thought they meant, do you want them?
[13:37.820 --> 13:38.140]  Yes.
[13:38.140 --> 13:39.540]  And they send it to you?
[13:40.000 --> 13:43.840]  What they really meant was, do you want it?
[13:44.000 --> 13:44.500]  Yes.
[13:44.680 --> 13:45.080]  Great.
[13:45.440 --> 13:50.960]  When we lose the lease on that shipping container, you will get that piece.
[13:51.440 --> 13:59.360]  That happened four months later in the dead of winter as I was about to leave for New York City from my upstate home.
[14:00.060 --> 14:03.220]  So I threw them under this plastic bag because I had stuff to do.
[14:03.460 --> 14:06.860]  And I took this sad, pathetic picture and said I needed help storing it.
[14:07.140 --> 14:08.600]  And ShmooCon stepped forward.
[14:08.740 --> 14:09.940]  So ShmooCon currently has it.
[14:09.980 --> 14:11.880]  Our plan is to digitize all of it and put it online.
[14:12.400 --> 14:16.500]  It's actually a fascinating insight into what the world thinks hackers are.
[14:16.600 --> 14:27.400]  This is, of course, the DeCSS case where they were browsing the DVD hacking IRC channels for months on end.
[14:27.400 --> 14:28.680]  So we have logs of all that.
[14:28.900 --> 14:30.500]  We have testimony from John Young.
[14:30.700 --> 14:31.800]  We have testimony from Emmanuel.
[14:31.980 --> 14:33.660]  We have testimony from a whole range of people.
[14:34.240 --> 14:35.040]  All saved.
[14:35.380 --> 14:37.580]  So it's just a case of saying, sure, I'll take it.
[14:37.660 --> 14:38.840]  And then regretting it forever.
[14:40.540 --> 14:45.680]  But also it's amazing how many people will step forward to take stuff if you put it pathetically outside in the snow.
[14:46.760 --> 14:48.140]  Good hint for you people on eBay.
[14:51.210 --> 14:53.170]  But you know, having this stuff is one thing.
[14:53.290 --> 14:55.750]  But then I think the real next move is to put it online.
[14:55.750 --> 14:57.510]  But not to destroy the original.
[14:57.990 --> 14:59.450]  That's a big fight I have with people.
[14:59.570 --> 15:04.230]  I see people who will basically rip all the pages out of a magazine, scan it, and then throw the pages away.
[15:04.710 --> 15:05.810]  I'm not a big fan of that.
[15:05.910 --> 15:07.310]  But I am a big fan of putting it online.
[15:07.590 --> 15:10.510]  So I put lots and lots of stuff online on textfiles.com.
[15:11.070 --> 15:13.030]  Textfiles.com, when it started, was text files.
[15:13.130 --> 15:20.150]  But now it's got everything from PDF files to music and sound and CDs.
[15:20.990 --> 15:29.670]  So for the CD collection, you can see if you're six inches from this friggin' screen, that there are three million files on there.
[15:29.970 --> 15:33.490]  Three million shareware files that I've split apart and made available.
[15:34.010 --> 15:36.050]  They're not ISOs because I just don't have the space.
[15:36.230 --> 15:42.870]  But you can go through all the file systems, go look at all what's on there, be able to see all the descriptions of these amazing, amazing images.
[15:42.870 --> 15:46.150]  And at this point, it's 300 gig, but it's actually a lot more now.
[15:47.010 --> 15:49.050]  You also get amazing things in the mail.
[15:49.290 --> 15:56.330]  This is a fascinating letter I got from a law firm about my erotic stories section, in which I gave a talk about this.
[15:57.690 --> 16:00.330]  The sex stories talk about something called a bardex.
[16:00.430 --> 16:02.290]  Well, a bardex is a urethral catheter.
[16:02.710 --> 16:03.190]  Alright?
[16:04.130 --> 16:09.390]  But a whole bunch of erotica uses it as a synonym for enema.
[16:09.650 --> 16:11.110]  I don't know why, but they do.
[16:11.470 --> 16:16.090]  And there's a thing called the Lanham Act, which if you're part of 2600's world, you know law.
[16:16.310 --> 16:17.110]  And it's a great law.
[16:17.390 --> 16:21.410]  The Lanham Act allows you to not diminish somebody else's trademark by misusing it.
[16:21.910 --> 16:29.810]  So, for instance, if you make a bomb and call it, you know, a Coca-Cola bomb, Coca-Cola can say, that's diminishing our trademark because we didn't mean to kill people with our Coca-Cola that quickly.
[16:33.560 --> 16:46.000]  So anyway, what I love about this thing is just this one line right here, which is, the use of our client's trademark to identify enema equipment in erotic fiction is likely to cause confusion and dilute the value of the bardex trademark in violation of trademark laws.
[16:48.140 --> 16:57.280]  Accordingly, we request you revise the text of the story is to refer to enema nozzle, enema balloon, enema bulb, or some other generic term and discontinue the use of the bardex trademark.
[16:57.660 --> 16:58.880]  I did not do that.
[17:01.420 --> 17:06.920]  I did take them down and I did put up their letter because, of course, their PDF letter includes all of the stories inside of it.
[17:07.100 --> 17:07.260]  So...
[17:14.860 --> 17:17.760]  Hint to all of you people who write me and say, like, take this down.
[17:17.940 --> 17:18.800]  I don't delete it.
[17:19.940 --> 17:20.300]  Sorry.
[17:20.480 --> 17:20.700]  Anyway.
[17:22.160 --> 17:28.800]  And so, you know, when you have this amount of stuff, you end up with a whole bunch of weird stories, weird things going on.
[17:28.800 --> 17:34.000]  You end up with just crashing into the reality of the history versus the now.
[17:34.300 --> 17:38.180]  And I'm quite fine being on this crux, but it does sometimes confuse people.
[17:38.300 --> 17:43.120]  I have people who send me things about, you know, here's something I did 20 years ago and I regret it.
[17:43.300 --> 17:46.020]  And I happen to believe in the infinite blotter that you wrote it.
[17:46.080 --> 17:47.260]  You wanted it to go everywhere.
[17:47.480 --> 17:48.600]  You got your wish.
[17:49.360 --> 17:50.560]  You got your wish.
[17:51.080 --> 17:53.080]  Everyone now knows what you were like in eighth grade.
[17:53.760 --> 17:56.120]  If you're still young in the audience, you just learned a lesson.
[17:56.560 --> 17:58.280]  You're going to do much better than your other peers.
[17:58.280 --> 17:59.440]  It's all going to come out.
[18:00.120 --> 18:01.480]  So, sorry about that.
[18:01.580 --> 18:02.320]  But it is.
[18:02.460 --> 18:03.180]  And it's not going to be me.
[18:03.300 --> 18:08.920]  It's going to be somebody younger than me, who's just born now, whose parents just got divorced, who is saving an awful lot of websites.
[18:10.180 --> 18:11.920]  But this is not enough for me.
[18:12.120 --> 18:12.500]  Okay?
[18:12.640 --> 18:16.500]  Putting things online and storing up a bunch of crap that people are milling to me is not enough.
[18:16.500 --> 18:20.280]  So I've been changing my life in other ways for the past 10 years.
[18:22.440 --> 18:25.080]  So, I started a group called Archive Team.
[18:25.580 --> 18:29.700]  Archive Team is an activist preservationist organization.
[18:31.120 --> 18:32.240]  ArchiveTeam.org.
[18:32.380 --> 18:36.740]  We are dedicated to the idea that right now we are in this terrible situation.
[18:36.960 --> 18:38.660]  We recognize a terrible situation.
[18:38.800 --> 18:41.540]  Right now, user data is not considered important.
[18:41.540 --> 18:45.880]  It is considered an unfortunate byproduct of business.
[18:46.200 --> 18:54.200]  And so, it's deleted as one might delete an unexpected log file on the end of your developer tag.
[18:54.600 --> 18:56.940]  It's not something that you consider important.
[18:57.180 --> 19:07.620]  But people have been duped for the last 20 years plus to put their lives online, to upload their photos, to tell their stories, to share their meaning, and put it all online.
[19:07.620 --> 19:11.940]  And, you know, we can sit here as people who are technically astute and say, well, they shouldn't do that.
[19:12.080 --> 19:12.880]  That's awesome.
[19:13.000 --> 19:15.900]  That's like walking by a car accident going, I would have worn my seatbelt.
[19:17.820 --> 19:18.200]  Okay?
[19:18.240 --> 19:19.160]  It does nothing.
[19:19.280 --> 19:20.340]  I hate that attitude.
[19:20.580 --> 19:22.360]  Instead, we try to do something about it.
[19:22.460 --> 19:25.980]  So, as an activist group, we will try to educate people.
[19:26.100 --> 19:27.660]  We will let them know what's going on.
[19:27.680 --> 19:39.440]  And when we see a site announcing it's going down in 30 days or 14 days or 90 days, and they're giving you poor export tools or no export tools, basically asking you to enjoy it, we step in.
[19:40.400 --> 19:41.940]  Here's a whole bunch of sites that go down.
[19:42.560 --> 19:43.000]  Coghead.
[19:43.100 --> 19:43.960]  Nobody cares about Coghead.
[19:44.040 --> 19:44.920]  Yahoo Video went down.
[19:45.140 --> 19:45.580]  Splendor.
[19:45.680 --> 19:47.140]  The Italian Geocities went down.
[19:47.460 --> 19:49.660]  Thanks for trying Kickstart, which is a Yahoo thing.
[19:49.780 --> 19:51.520]  All these sites are now gone.
[19:52.860 --> 19:55.220]  MobileMe, for instance, just shut down.
[19:55.560 --> 20:00.100]  Now, they will tell you that they've gone to iWork and iCloud, but, in fact, all the websites are gone.
[20:00.780 --> 20:02.660]  All the websites are gone.
[20:04.160 --> 20:05.220]  How big is that?
[20:05.580 --> 20:08.120]  Turns out it's very big, because we downloaded it.
[20:13.620 --> 20:16.000]  We have something we call the Universal Tracker.
[20:16.140 --> 20:18.040]  Some of you might think of it as Archive at Home.
[20:18.440 --> 20:26.260]  Using a virtual machine called the Archive Team Warrior, that you can run in Linux, Mac OS, and Windows, you connect to it, and you get on a leaderboard.
[20:26.460 --> 20:31.100]  And then our central tracker tells you which user accounts to download to get a copy of them, and it keeps going.
[20:31.360 --> 20:40.500]  If you look at this closely, and you don't have to, what it will tell you right there is that, at this point, we have downloaded 232 terabytes.
[20:42.520 --> 20:46.700]  At an average of 698 megabytes a second.
[20:48.480 --> 20:50.260]  Now, that's, of course, inaccurate, actually.
[20:50.360 --> 20:54.860]  It was 735 megs a second, and it was 278 terabytes by the time we were done.
[20:57.980 --> 21:00.640]  That's a lot of space.
[21:01.160 --> 21:04.160]  And people can go, geez, that's a lot.
[21:04.300 --> 21:06.620]  That's a waste of, 200, what a waste of space.
[21:06.740 --> 21:12.640]  And congratulations, you are the newest generation of f*cker, going 600 megs, who wants to keep this big bulk around?
[21:13.620 --> 21:20.680]  Okay, because in another 10 years, 278 terabytes is going to be what you trade, because you want to be impressive to somebody.
[21:21.000 --> 21:24.380]  But right now, it's huge, it's untenable, so we grabbed a copy.
[21:24.380 --> 21:27.720]  We even have a graph, letting you quickly go see how we're doing.
[21:27.880 --> 21:31.960]  As you can see, we start to get more and more people adhering to this as we go on.
[21:32.160 --> 21:36.280]  And you can see one or two people are real heroes.
[21:37.240 --> 21:41.620]  It plateaus, because at that point, we've gotten them, and now we're doing quality checking.
[21:41.940 --> 21:47.360]  But this guy, this guy, Kenneth, he decided, I'm going to open up 100 machines on Heroku.
[21:48.820 --> 21:50.220]  Turned out he won the leaderboard.
[21:50.220 --> 21:55.240]  If you give people a leaderboard, they will do stupid shit all day, all day long.
[21:57.380 --> 21:59.380]  Archive team is moving up to achievements next.
[21:59.560 --> 22:00.660]  We've got an artist working on it.
[22:02.620 --> 22:04.180]  For instance, Tableau.
[22:04.340 --> 22:06.260]  Okay, this is how we're working in the modern era, okay?
[22:06.540 --> 22:11.900]  And again, this is all an extension of my original concern of wanting to save my blanket and my dog.
[22:12.360 --> 22:15.400]  We want to be able to stop people from losing what they do.
[22:15.400 --> 22:20.380]  Now, Tableau is a photo-sharing site owned by HP.
[22:20.560 --> 22:22.160]  And HP also owns Snapfish.
[22:22.280 --> 22:26.360]  So they basically threw Snapfish and Tableau into a room with a broken pool cue.
[22:26.580 --> 22:28.260]  And Snapfish emerged bloodily.
[22:29.740 --> 22:32.480]  So Tableau was given basically about 30 days.
[22:32.480 --> 22:33.640]  We're going to get out of town.
[22:33.720 --> 22:35.140]  This is all that remains of Tableau.
[22:35.200 --> 22:37.460]  Tableau had 300,000 users with photos.
[22:38.140 --> 22:42.140]  Primarily, I might say, women with pictures of their kids.
[22:42.140 --> 22:46.740]  So you can imagine their delight in finding out that all their stuff was going down.
[22:46.920 --> 22:48.780]  Often after it was down.
[22:49.440 --> 22:51.420]  Because they did a really poor job this time.
[22:52.360 --> 22:54.340]  So we grabbed all of it.
[22:54.460 --> 22:57.900]  We grabbed all of it in 36 hours because of our system.
[22:58.120 --> 22:59.840]  So we put it back up again.
[23:00.000 --> 23:03.900]  And then we put up a search engine that instantly got you back your old photos.
[23:04.180 --> 23:06.980]  I am not going to make your eyes well up with the letters we get from mothers.
[23:07.820 --> 23:08.500]  But wait!
[23:09.420 --> 23:10.400]  What about people?
[23:10.940 --> 23:12.220]  So this is John Sheets.
[23:12.600 --> 23:20.400]  John Sheets is a Bell engineer who I interviewed back in 2003 related to a documentary, which is why there's that big lens in his face.
[23:21.100 --> 23:23.540]  And John Sheets said, why would you want to talk to me?
[23:23.820 --> 23:25.480]  This is the number one thing I get.
[23:25.600 --> 23:26.900]  I've done hundreds of interviews.
[23:27.220 --> 23:30.660]  My number one favorite question is, why would you want to talk to me?
[23:30.740 --> 23:34.580]  He could not believe that I had driven from Boston to Edison, New Jersey to interview him.
[23:34.580 --> 23:36.140]  Why did I come to interview him?
[23:36.240 --> 23:40.060]  In this particular case, it was because he had the largest collection of remote teletype art.
[23:40.820 --> 23:50.240]  And he had all these things because he was the co-runner of the RTTY Art Contest where people would connect to remote teletype via ham radio and send each other images on Sunday.
[23:50.540 --> 23:53.160]  And they had a contest over who could draw the best things.
[23:53.360 --> 23:55.140]  And he had all these wonderful images.
[23:55.440 --> 23:58.100]  Now I'm not going to again, no time to show you all these images.
[23:58.280 --> 24:05.020]  Each one of the things I'm telling you is a thread that maybe you can go back and look on yourself after this talk to learn about all these things going on.
[24:05.160 --> 24:06.620]  But I do love this one.
[24:06.860 --> 24:19.160]  This one is a 1932 typewriter art converted by a telegraph operator to a telegraph tape, then converted by a RTTY Art guy who then made it into a text file, which I still have.
[24:19.320 --> 24:22.560]  So this one took a bit of time to get to this point.
[24:22.680 --> 24:26.420]  But the point is, it was this unbroken chain of people thinking, this looks pretty friggin' awesome.
[24:29.040 --> 24:30.600]  I love things in history.
[24:30.720 --> 24:32.620]  Here I am posing with Fokal's Pendulum.
[24:33.120 --> 24:33.980]  Why not?
[24:34.720 --> 24:38.820]  Here's me in the caves that Adventure were originally based on.
[24:38.940 --> 24:39.460]  Bed Quilt.
[24:39.700 --> 24:48.300]  Shooting a documentary and shooting a model, actual caver, but a model caver, to go through the actual locations.
[24:48.680 --> 24:53.220]  So this is the bird chamber, if you've ever played Adventure.
[24:54.580 --> 24:55.380]  I've made two documentaries.
[24:55.980 --> 24:57.620]  One's called BBS the Documentary.
[24:57.720 --> 24:58.400]  Imagine that.
[24:58.760 --> 25:01.820]  Another one is called Get Lamp, which is about text adventures.
[25:02.180 --> 25:03.520]  I'm not going to sell them to you right now.
[25:03.580 --> 25:07.960]  I'm just going to tell you that I made them because I believed very strongly that these were human stories.
[25:08.160 --> 25:12.020]  That when we have the artifacts, which I've been collecting all my life, that is awesome.
[25:12.280 --> 25:14.360]  But in another part, that's just the bones.
[25:14.580 --> 25:27.360]  And if you look at a pile of bones, you have no idea if that pile of bones loved, unless it's actually jammed into another skeleton, or how those bones got to where they are, where they had been, what they mean, and everything else.
[25:27.540 --> 25:31.340]  The sinew, the messel, that's all of these human stories that I record.
[25:31.600 --> 25:32.660]  Very important to me.
[25:32.820 --> 25:46.960]  I encourage you, if you are somebody who collects history, to spend as much time using all these wonderful technologies, such as Skype, podcasting, mailing somebody a recorder, to be able to get the final stories that come with the things you're collecting.
[25:48.260 --> 25:53.020]  I've done a lot of travel, these are hotel keys, to tell these stories.
[25:53.200 --> 25:54.860]  I've been all over the world to collect these stories.
[25:55.020 --> 26:01.740]  I'm working on more now, because I think that, even though it's a big pain in the ass to always be on the road, there's so many of these stories to tell.
[26:01.940 --> 26:05.020]  For the BBS documentary, I interviewed 205 people.
[26:05.440 --> 26:10.220]  For the Get Lamp, since it's about something as little as text adventures, I only did 80.
[26:11.360 --> 26:20.420]  But the thing is, is that all these people produced hour-long interviews with me that I have considered edited, turned into movies, and then put up.
[26:20.700 --> 26:25.140]  Because I learned, over time, that that's what I wanted to do.
[26:26.820 --> 26:29.340]  On the left is Jordan Mechner, on the right is Tony Diaz.
[26:30.040 --> 26:31.460]  This is in Jordan Mechner's home.
[26:31.700 --> 26:33.880]  Jordan Mechner is the creator of Prince of Persia.
[26:35.240 --> 26:41.940]  I was involved in a project where Jordan Mechner had gotten a box from his dad of some old computer parts.
[26:42.020 --> 26:46.100]  And inside the computer parts were his original source code to Prince of Persia.
[26:47.340 --> 26:50.200]  And he thought, hmm, I'd love to get that up or something.
[26:50.360 --> 26:54.720]  And people said, and this is a nice benefit of having lived this life, you should talk to Jason Scott.
[26:56.080 --> 26:58.940]  Now, as it turns out, Jordan Mechner and I went to the same high school.
[27:00.720 --> 27:01.440]  Pure coincidence.
[27:01.760 --> 27:04.000]  We didn't go... I knew his brother very well, but I didn't know him.
[27:04.120 --> 27:06.940]  His brother is the model of the person in Prince of Persia, by the way.
[27:06.940 --> 27:11.020]  They filmed around our high school and then transferred it into data.
[27:11.300 --> 27:19.780]  But it was now sitting on this bizarre little three and a half inch floppy disk for a machine he no longer had in a format he never had.
[27:20.000 --> 27:21.820]  But I knew about Tony Diaz.
[27:21.940 --> 27:24.620]  That's the guy on the left there, on the right there for you.
[27:25.500 --> 27:28.160]  He is an Apple II expert.
[27:28.760 --> 27:30.640]  Three words, again, guaranteed to get you laid.
[27:30.880 --> 27:34.300]  But also, really something amazing.
[27:34.300 --> 27:42.160]  Because to me, what matters is pairing people up, one by one, and finding out who needs to be there.
[27:42.240 --> 27:44.240]  So he was the guy who made Prince of Persia.
[27:44.380 --> 27:46.220]  He was a guy who could transfer a disk.
[27:47.900 --> 27:49.640]  So he brought over a whole bunch of things.
[27:49.760 --> 27:54.100]  Now, we brought over way more than we needed to, because Wired was shooting the process and Wired did a story on it.
[27:54.180 --> 27:57.060]  But a lot of that material was used to make sure we got it.
[27:57.260 --> 27:58.220]  And we got it!
[27:58.220 --> 28:04.140]  And we definitely got the original source code of Prince of Persia off this old floppy disk.
[28:04.500 --> 28:08.920]  And so, this, when people were discussing it, it turns out that...
[28:09.400 --> 28:11.320]  How many people here know Apple IIs?
[28:11.460 --> 28:13.960]  I don't mean that there's an Apple... that an Apple II existed.
[28:14.520 --> 28:17.420]  How many people here, like, Apple II, like anything about...
[28:17.420 --> 28:22.120]  If I say that instead of a 16-sector disk, they were able to get an 18-sector disk, do you whistle?
[28:22.360 --> 28:23.320]  Okay, I get one guy...
[28:23.800 --> 28:24.240]  Okay.
[28:25.360 --> 28:26.940]  Well, Giggler, let me tell you.
[28:28.240 --> 28:30.460]  16-sectors is the standard Apple thing.
[28:30.640 --> 28:40.360]  But a guy named Roland Gustafson wrote this very unique protection system back then, called RW18, which enabled him to put 18-sectors on a disk.
[28:40.480 --> 28:43.960]  Which meant, first of all, everybody's copy program didn't work.
[28:44.500 --> 28:47.760]  And second of all, he could put enormous amounts of data on it, comparatively.
[28:47.900 --> 28:47.980]  Right?
[28:48.020 --> 28:51.400]  Another 10% or 5% of data, if he put it in there right.
[28:51.600 --> 28:52.040]  Okay?
[28:52.040 --> 29:07.040]  When he saw, when Roland Gustafson himself saw people on Metafilter discussing the protection system, he found his old floppy and made it available, and proceeded to jump into the whole discussion, to say, here's why I did it, and here's what's going on.
[29:07.160 --> 29:09.420]  And he's been excitedly involved since.
[29:09.620 --> 29:12.700]  He had this stuff just sitting around, thinking nobody cared.
[29:13.540 --> 29:16.240]  Old, old story, I'm done here.
[29:16.420 --> 29:20.180]  And so he jumped out of nowhere, and so this history gets saved.
[29:20.760 --> 29:25.580]  Here are two games Jordan Mechner made before his first game, which was called Karatika.
[29:26.220 --> 29:32.920]  One was an Asteroids clone that he brought to Broderbund, and right around that time, there were a few lawsuits about look and feel, so Broderbund dropped the idea.
[29:33.060 --> 29:36.560]  But it is an Apple II perfect example of Asteroids.
[29:36.700 --> 29:41.660]  And the right one is a game called Death Bounce, which he also worked on, which they decided to turn on.
[29:41.660 --> 29:44.200]  But because we were saving this, he saved these.
[29:44.500 --> 29:45.780]  We put the disk images up.
[29:45.860 --> 29:49.580]  People are running them in emulators, and these games that have been away for almost 30 years live again.
[29:50.520 --> 29:57.820]  And, of course, if you've got the assembly language source of Prince of Persia, certainly, go ahead and put it on GitHub.
[30:02.980 --> 30:04.980]  So, yeah, we ended up putting it on GitHub.
[30:05.420 --> 30:12.560]  And, you know, my favorite bit was, like, you know, people have been looking at it, and apparently it's a really good assembly source.
[30:12.760 --> 30:27.680]  Like, Jordan told me, again, this is a story, but Jordan told me, basically, that he knew that the previous game, Karatika, had not been ported very well, because he had written such dense assembly language code that nobody could read it.
[30:28.180 --> 30:31.680]  So he was, you know, and, of course, that meant the ports were kind of crappy.
[30:31.820 --> 30:33.000]  They were kind of faking the look.
[30:33.120 --> 30:34.680]  They were kind of faking the way it was.
[30:34.840 --> 30:37.140]  So he said, I'm going to make the next one as clean as possible.
[30:37.400 --> 30:41.260]  That turns out to be a really good thing, because now the source is unbelievably readable.
[30:43.900 --> 30:47.020]  But what I really love is, of course, nobody's really compiled it yet.
[30:47.020 --> 30:49.380]  I'd love for someone to actually go ahead and try and compile it.
[30:51.100 --> 30:52.000]  And I was really pissed.
[30:52.100 --> 30:53.900]  Somebody said, can you tell me how to compile it?
[30:53.920 --> 30:55.160]  I said, no, you should open an issue.
[30:55.160 --> 30:57.260]  He opened an issue saying, I'd like to compile it.
[30:57.660 --> 31:00.700]  And somebody wrote, like, it's all there, and closed the issue.
[31:01.840 --> 31:03.400]  Like, thanks, dickbag.
[31:05.080 --> 31:12.580]  But I do love the fact that somebody went in, went into the source, did a branch, and removed all the disk protection.
[31:13.420 --> 31:15.060]  And I was like, there you go.
[31:15.240 --> 31:16.860]  Sure-fire pirating technique.
[31:17.220 --> 31:18.080]  Game comes out.
[31:18.560 --> 31:19.940]  Wait 18 years.
[31:22.120 --> 31:23.480]  It's on GitHub and source.
[31:23.740 --> 31:24.780]  Remove the copy protection.
[31:25.100 --> 31:26.040]  Easily copied.
[31:28.120 --> 31:28.600]  Cracked.
[31:30.620 --> 31:31.760]  Cracked by time.
[31:34.690 --> 31:35.250]  All right.
[31:35.310 --> 31:36.230]  So where am I going with all this?
[31:36.650 --> 31:37.850]  This is a butter lion.
[31:39.410 --> 31:41.770]  This lion is actually entirely made out of butter.
[31:41.870 --> 31:42.730]  I don't know why.
[31:43.850 --> 31:45.110]  Why did they make a whole...
[31:45.110 --> 31:48.990]  I felt really bad using his paw to make my bagel be buttered.
[31:50.470 --> 31:55.510]  I think everybody on that cruise was kind of really respectful of Butter Lion.
[31:56.370 --> 31:59.950]  Nothing about Butter Lion's majesty says, please, take of me.
[32:01.490 --> 32:11.350]  He says, I will look at you from my dairy throne and inspect as you get fatter on whatever it is you're eating at 2 in the morning.
[32:12.030 --> 32:14.370]  Cruises have midnight chocolate fountains.
[32:14.430 --> 32:14.970]  What the f*ck?
[32:15.630 --> 32:16.090]  Anyway.
[32:19.260 --> 32:20.880]  So, here's a robot messenger.
[32:21.020 --> 32:22.740]  Displays person-to-person notes in public.
[32:22.880 --> 32:24.260]  This is from 1935.
[32:24.840 --> 32:27.840]  People who want to make appointments or inform friends of their whereabouts.
[32:28.360 --> 32:30.400]  You basically have a thing called a notifier.
[32:30.680 --> 32:31.480]  You walk up.
[32:31.580 --> 32:33.440]  You write a brief message on a strip of paper.
[32:33.680 --> 32:36.600]  Then it goes up behind where it remains in public view for two hours.
[32:36.720 --> 32:38.320]  So another person goes by and reads it.
[32:38.840 --> 32:39.720]  Yes, that is right.
[32:39.960 --> 32:41.120]  1935 instant messaging.
[32:43.340 --> 32:55.680]  Here is an anti-piracy ad for corn harvesters from the 1800s warning you to look out for those cheap knockoff corn harvesters.
[32:55.960 --> 33:07.680]  That you have to make sure it has our trademark on it and that you are going to be liable for damages if you make, use, or sell infringing corn harvesting machines.
[33:09.380 --> 33:10.340]  Nothing changes.
[33:11.980 --> 33:15.740]  When the fire alarm went off, it took two hours to evacuate the World Trade Center, says asbestos.
[33:16.980 --> 33:18.660]  Asbestos when your life depends on it.
[33:22.200 --> 33:26.140]  Here are children being sprayed with DDT because DDT is totally safe.
[33:26.140 --> 33:29.800]  As it says on the bottom with the cartoon things, DDT is good for me.
[33:31.060 --> 33:35.140]  Here are some cocaine accessories sold in 1970s.
[33:35.840 --> 33:42.120]  These are ivory handled cocaine accessories available in the back of my...
[33:42.120 --> 33:43.900]  Because you deserve it.
[33:44.260 --> 33:45.240]  Go ahead.
[33:45.700 --> 33:47.100]  You deserve it.
[33:47.680 --> 33:50.360]  Isn't it time you gave yourself a Christmas gift?
[33:55.890 --> 33:56.970]  Merry Christmas!
[34:00.470 --> 34:05.910]  On the left, this is a rejection letter from Disney telling someone that she should not...
[34:05.910 --> 34:10.170]  That the position of animator is not open to her because they do not hire women.
[34:12.070 --> 34:14.190]  That's 1950... no, 38, sorry.
[34:14.770 --> 34:18.730]  However, the position of inker or painter is available.
[34:18.730 --> 34:21.090]  Be, you know, be aware.
[34:21.270 --> 34:22.870]  A lot of women try out for that.
[34:23.850 --> 34:25.530]  On the right, slave ad.
[34:26.510 --> 34:33.590]  What I think is most interesting about this slave ad, though, is that it's telling you that a new batch of Negroes has arrived.
[34:34.310 --> 34:39.150]  But it's very careful to tell you that some of them are really skilled.
[34:39.470 --> 34:41.570]  Seamstresses, chambermaids, field hands.
[34:42.490 --> 34:48.550]  And the thing is, is that it's saying, these aren't human beings, but they're really skilled.
[34:49.790 --> 34:52.270]  This is an incredible mental gymnastic.
[34:52.810 --> 34:56.370]  And one that us, looking a hundred years later, go, what the f*ck, dude?
[34:57.090 --> 34:58.030]  What the f*ck?
[34:58.370 --> 35:03.050]  And the fact is, is that in many years to hence, people are gonna look at us right now and go, what the f*ck?
[35:03.730 --> 35:03.990]  Okay?
[35:04.790 --> 35:08.370]  Century after century is the previous century going, what the f*ck?
[35:08.370 --> 35:11.030]  And then the next one going, what the f*ck wrong with you?
[35:12.090 --> 35:25.610]  And the way that we know all these crazy things, all these insane things about asbestos and shooting yourself with a cult, cocaine, ivory, is because all of these represent an unbroken chain of people agreeing not to destroy this history.
[35:26.270 --> 35:26.550]  Okay?
[35:26.890 --> 35:32.530]  Every one of these things has passed through hands, have been kept aside, and they didn't make the decision to destroy.
[35:32.870 --> 35:34.930]  This is one of my core principles.
[35:35.410 --> 35:40.490]  It's not my job, not my right, to destroy history.
[35:40.930 --> 35:42.950]  And not to let others destroy history.
[35:43.170 --> 35:47.110]  Let the next hundred years decide what's funny, what's not, and get rid of it.
[35:47.450 --> 35:48.930]  But no, it's not our job.
[35:49.110 --> 35:50.770]  Let's keep it around a little bit longer.
[35:50.930 --> 35:52.890]  Because it's probably only going to get funnier.
[35:55.090 --> 35:56.350]  It's a little bit about dying.
[35:57.730 --> 36:00.290]  So, this is my demonstration part.
[36:02.390 --> 36:07.450]  Inalapril, 20 mega... 20 mega... 20 milligrams, 20 megagrams.
[36:11.080 --> 36:12.800]  He was never heard from again.
[36:14.740 --> 36:15.240]  Mmm.
[36:16.780 --> 36:18.080]  Tastes like success.
[36:19.880 --> 36:22.840]  Amlodipine, Bessel 8, 10 milligram tablets.
[36:23.400 --> 36:24.720]  Take one tablet by mouth per day.
[36:26.280 --> 36:26.880]  Mmm-hmm.
[36:29.980 --> 36:31.140]  The room grows silent.
[36:35.380 --> 36:36.720]  Oh, that's so sweet of you.
[36:38.800 --> 36:39.240]  Allopurinol.
[36:39.420 --> 36:40.720]  300 milligram tablets.
[36:40.940 --> 36:42.700]  Take one tablet by mouth every day.
[36:43.840 --> 36:44.100]  Mmm.
[36:44.900 --> 36:45.880]  Mmm-mmm-mmm.
[36:54.860 --> 36:56.320]  And that's why I'm alive.
[36:57.920 --> 36:59.920]  I did something called the Jason Scott Sabbatical.
[36:59.940 --> 37:02.080]  I was laid off from my job about three years ago.
[37:02.620 --> 37:04.180]  And I was like, well, that sucked.
[37:04.360 --> 37:04.940]  What can I do?
[37:05.680 --> 37:06.480]  I know...
[37:06.480 --> 37:08.380]  And remember, this was a few years ago.
[37:08.620 --> 37:09.520]  Let's use Kickstarter.
[37:10.660 --> 37:11.500]  I was very...
[37:11.500 --> 37:12.780]  I was one of the first users of Kickstarter.
[37:13.080 --> 37:15.100]  Which means I had this awesome Kickstarter.
[37:16.380 --> 37:19.960]  Give me a lot of money, and I will spend all of it.
[37:22.200 --> 37:23.220]  People make the joke.
[37:23.400 --> 37:24.440]  I live the joke.
[37:25.180 --> 37:26.880]  It's called the Jason Scott Sabbatical.
[37:27.020 --> 37:29.940]  I showed people what I had been up to for all those years before.
[37:30.420 --> 37:32.020]  All these projects you're seeing.
[37:32.220 --> 37:32.740]  All these things.
[37:32.920 --> 37:33.720]  And I said, you know what?
[37:33.940 --> 37:39.980]  Instead of turning computer history into my sideline of my hobby, let's make it my life.
[37:40.920 --> 37:45.520]  So if you guys give me money, I will spend at least a year doing that and finding something new.
[37:46.920 --> 37:47.660]  So they did.
[37:47.780 --> 37:48.840]  They gave me $30,000.
[37:49.700 --> 37:53.100]  I lived on that for about a year and a half, along with selling documentaries.
[37:53.100 --> 37:57.020]  I finished my second documentary, and I was doing really well on my own.
[37:57.900 --> 38:02.340]  Until I was doing a showing, and there was something wrong with my cell phone.
[38:02.980 --> 38:05.740]  And what was wrong with my cell phone was it had a dead spot on it.
[38:05.840 --> 38:08.260]  And I was really pissed because I just bought this cell phone.
[38:09.460 --> 38:12.760]  Until I closed my left eye and noticed that the spot wasn't there.
[38:14.160 --> 38:16.300]  And then I was like, now that's really strange.
[38:17.020 --> 38:22.420]  So it really turned out as I was driving home, my father said, we really should, you should go to the ophthalmologist tomorrow.
[38:22.660 --> 38:23.580]  Just to get a look at that.
[38:23.940 --> 38:29.060]  I go in there and the ophthalmologist goes, I'm going to take one picture of your eye and you have to drive immediately to the emergency room.
[38:29.500 --> 38:34.180]  Turns out you should, because they took my blood pressure, and your blood pressure should not be 220 over 180.
[38:36.400 --> 38:37.840]  Turned out I was about to stroke out.
[38:38.400 --> 38:40.500]  Turned out I have unbelievably high blood pressure.
[38:40.720 --> 38:42.100]  Turns out I'm vaguely hypertensive.
[38:42.200 --> 38:43.260]  I don't know why!
[38:44.600 --> 38:45.740]  What the f*ck!
[38:46.160 --> 38:47.220]  I am zen!
[38:49.980 --> 38:54.120]  But, I started to fight with them over this.
[38:54.420 --> 39:00.860]  Because they gave me some medicine to stabilize my blood pressure.
[39:01.580 --> 39:03.800]  I didn't want to stay because I knew it might be expensive.
[39:03.800 --> 39:04.740]  I had no insurance.
[39:05.020 --> 39:07.060]  And the guy said, you've got to stay, you're going to die.
[39:07.480 --> 39:11.680]  So I stayed, I came over, and I got an $18,000 hospital stay bill.
[39:11.680 --> 39:14.540]  Which was a lot of money, turns out.
[39:14.900 --> 39:16.200]  For somebody who doesn't have any.
[39:17.080 --> 39:20.880]  So, you know, I was starting to make those terrible decisions.
[39:21.500 --> 39:23.080]  I can still see.
[39:23.700 --> 39:26.900]  I don't need to enjoy 3D movies.
[39:28.000 --> 39:29.680]  I can probably get by.
[39:30.000 --> 39:35.800]  And I was fighting, the next two times I went into the hospital, to not go.
[39:35.980 --> 39:37.480]  To not take care of myself.
[39:37.480 --> 39:39.180]  To not stay alive.
[39:39.400 --> 39:41.240]  Because it would cost me too much money.
[39:41.960 --> 39:42.180]  Okay?
[39:42.780 --> 39:47.400]  So, not to get political, but anyone who talks about health insurance, like it's not something you need to have, is just full of f*ck.
[39:47.900 --> 39:49.360]  Because I was going to die.
[39:54.540 --> 39:57.540]  Now, eventually I was able to get my hands on insurance.
[39:57.540 --> 40:00.100]  And I was able to get back on the train.
[40:00.780 --> 40:00.900]  Okay?
[40:01.240 --> 40:03.260]  These pills without insurance, that you just saw.
[40:03.860 --> 40:06.420]  One month's supply was $130.
[40:06.720 --> 40:08.380]  On insurance, it's $12.
[40:09.560 --> 40:11.700]  So, I like the insurance version.
[40:12.660 --> 40:15.860]  And I take them every day, and my blood pressure has been normal for two years.
[40:16.520 --> 40:17.460]  One of those is allopurinol.
[40:18.000 --> 40:19.340]  That's not for... that's for gout.
[40:19.460 --> 40:21.800]  If anyone remembers at Defcon, I'd go around on a Segway.
[40:21.900 --> 40:23.020]  That was because I could not walk.
[40:23.200 --> 40:25.380]  I can walk now, just fine.
[40:25.660 --> 40:27.980]  I haven't had a kidney stone in two years.
[40:28.300 --> 40:30.020]  Again, because I'm on these drugs.
[40:30.660 --> 40:31.740]  Because I work here.
[40:32.420 --> 40:34.220]  I work for the Internet Archive.
[40:34.940 --> 40:37.780]  Because I gave a talk about Archive Team and how important it was.
[40:38.260 --> 40:40.480]  And then I went downstairs and said, you should hire me.
[40:41.040 --> 40:42.320]  And they hired me.
[40:44.960 --> 40:46.900]  No resume, just me.
[40:48.220 --> 40:49.020]  And it worked.
[40:49.620 --> 40:51.820]  My official title is Free Range Archivist.
[40:52.900 --> 40:55.300]  I work for the Internet Archive in San Francisco.
[40:55.600 --> 40:57.340]  One of the finest places in the world.
[40:58.500 --> 40:59.640]  I love this place.
[41:00.220 --> 41:02.660]  There's 19 petabytes on site.
[41:03.740 --> 41:04.640]  That I know of.
[41:05.740 --> 41:08.400]  I mean, it's literally a case of I come in later and I'm like, what's that?
[41:08.580 --> 41:09.280]  Oh, another petabyte.
[41:10.960 --> 41:13.120]  Each one of those drives you're seeing there is three terabytes.
[41:15.520 --> 41:20.760]  You know, it's funny because one of the things that's really kind of bothered me about stuff is, you know, people like know the Wayback Machine.
[41:21.300 --> 41:26.500]  But like the Wayback Machine is to the Internet Archive like what Monaco is to like Europe.
[41:27.160 --> 41:28.760]  They do so much work.
[41:29.020 --> 41:30.540]  They do so much work.
[41:30.660 --> 41:33.180]  They're working so hard to save so much of computer history.
[41:33.600 --> 41:40.480]  That people just think, oh, well, I'll just, for instance, open library.org, which is their way of lending and borrowing books.
[41:40.620 --> 41:43.480]  And you can use it if you have a library card with a lot of libraries.
[41:43.700 --> 41:45.520]  It's a fascinating, beautiful thing.
[41:45.720 --> 41:47.660]  And they collect all sorts of material.
[41:47.800 --> 41:49.620]  The Grateful Dead Archive goes there.
[41:50.300 --> 41:53.860]  There's all sorts of radio programs, old stuff, tapes, books.
[41:54.080 --> 41:56.500]  They digitize a new book every 90 seconds.
[41:57.020 --> 41:58.080]  They are working it.
[41:58.080 --> 41:59.880]  I love being a part of them.
[42:00.880 --> 42:03.820]  Now, because I'm a bombastic asshole, I'm not allowed to speak for them.
[42:03.860 --> 42:08.340]  So I'm speaking to you as a fan, not as a representation of the Internet Archive.
[42:08.460 --> 42:09.060]  Let me make that clear.
[42:10.240 --> 42:14.000]  At the Internet Archive, I have been able to, with my admin access, do things.
[42:14.080 --> 42:17.300]  For instance, here's a collection of 400 arcade manuals.
[42:18.120 --> 42:24.440]  Because I thought, you know, the worst thing in the world for an arcade machine is to not have the manual and somebody decides not to buy it.
[42:24.620 --> 42:27.480]  And I hate these f*ckers who sell them for $40 a piece.
[42:28.060 --> 42:29.380]  Let's put them all online.
[42:29.580 --> 42:30.420]  So they're all online.
[42:31.300 --> 42:32.040]  Beautiful stuff.
[42:32.160 --> 42:33.400]  Twin Rifle by Chicago Coin.
[42:33.520 --> 42:35.180]  I mean, this is stuff going back, way back.
[42:35.320 --> 42:36.300]  And I've been using...
[42:36.300 --> 42:41.940]  I've been basically having volunteers type in the descriptions, the short descriptions, so they have use and show up in search engines.
[42:43.440 --> 42:44.820]  And my CD-ROMs.
[42:44.880 --> 42:47.460]  Well, remember when I said I had 300 gigs of CD-ROMs?
[42:47.560 --> 42:48.760]  That's on my old site.
[42:49.340 --> 43:03.320]  On the new site, I have over 1,500 CD-ROMs, cover discs, the entire FreeBSD, back catalogue, tons of things from Walnut Creek, cover discs from magazines that are in Germany and Polish.
[43:03.660 --> 43:06.100]  And I've got a whole team of volunteers adding these things.
[43:07.420 --> 43:09.560]  This is the Internet Underground Music Archive.
[43:09.600 --> 43:11.820]  How many people remember the Internet Underground Music Archive?
[43:11.880 --> 43:12.720]  This would be IUMA.
[43:13.020 --> 43:19.460]  A place so early that they used to have real audio, MP2 and MP3, because they didn't know which one was going to win.
[43:21.380 --> 43:21.820]  1993.
[43:22.160 --> 43:23.320]  Started out as an FTP site.
[43:23.460 --> 43:24.080]  Became a business.
[43:24.240 --> 43:25.360]  Got bought out by eMusic.
[43:25.580 --> 43:29.560]  Got f*cked in the ass for seven years and died of intense ass-f*cking.
[43:31.980 --> 43:40.080]  Well, it turns out John Gilmore, co-founder of the EFF, went ahead and downloaded it in 2005.
[43:40.900 --> 43:44.820]  Gave me the four millimeter tapes, and I put them all back up again this year.
[43:45.440 --> 43:49.620]  That's 45,000 artists, 680,000 tracks of music.
[43:50.500 --> 43:51.400]  Because you could!
[43:55.150 --> 43:56.810]  You know, it's barely a terabyte.
[43:57.110 --> 43:58.410]  Oh, you're giving me a ten!
[43:58.710 --> 44:00.110]  It's a good speech, apparently.
[44:00.110 --> 44:08.460]  So, Jamendo, Muse Open, these are all open source projects we've dragged on there.
[44:08.580 --> 44:14.340]  And the DNA Lounge, which has been web recording for years, I have acquired all of their performances since 1999.
[44:14.340 --> 44:18.440]  There's 10,000 nights of shows.
[44:20.000 --> 44:29.020]  So, if you go to archive.org and type in DNA Lounge, there's a lot of awesome nights, of five-hour MP3s, of every kind of nightclub dance you could perform.
[44:29.440 --> 44:30.660]  Go to the club, too, please.
[44:31.860 --> 44:33.060]  Who are my personal heroes?
[44:33.320 --> 44:35.060]  I mean, you know, you've got your celebrity heroes, right?
[44:35.080 --> 44:35.760]  You've got people like this.
[44:35.820 --> 44:36.460]  This is Al Jaffe.
[44:36.640 --> 44:37.600]  He created the Mad Fold-in.
[44:37.800 --> 44:38.320]  Love that guy.
[44:39.920 --> 44:40.240]  That's...
[44:40.240 --> 44:43.660]  There I am, telling Ira Glass he's a f*cking awesome dude.
[44:44.640 --> 44:46.560]  And, of course, Brewster Cale, my boss.
[44:46.900 --> 44:47.620]  Love this guy.
[44:47.780 --> 44:51.020]  So, you saw him before, there he is over there, going, what the f*ck is he saying?
[44:53.220 --> 44:57.780]  Brewster, to his great credit, doesn't know what the hell to make of me, other than not die.
[44:57.780 --> 44:59.760]  But, I really appreciate that.
[44:59.840 --> 45:01.940]  He believes that I'm doing the right thing, ultimately.
[45:02.800 --> 45:06.420]  Here's Rick Prelinger and Megan Prelinger of the Prelinger Archives.
[45:09.420 --> 45:12.760]  Every time we go out there, it's a mutual admiration society with the two of us.
[45:13.240 --> 45:14.680]  He is my hero.
[45:14.860 --> 45:18.640]  He does things... this is his library that he has for public consumption.
[45:18.880 --> 45:20.380]  They open it up a few times a week.
[45:20.980 --> 45:22.000]  Tons of material.
[45:22.320 --> 45:23.160]  Tons of material.
[45:23.880 --> 45:24.360]  Tons of material.
[45:24.560 --> 45:25.040]  Including...
[45:26.760 --> 45:27.240]  Some...
[45:27.240 --> 45:31.580]  You know, as a result of having all this material, they have all sorts of things that are...
[45:31.580 --> 45:33.200]  Like, they don't even know they have that stuff.
[45:33.440 --> 45:34.480]  I found this.
[45:34.620 --> 45:37.420]  This is the famous Ramparts article that the telephone system...
[45:38.340 --> 45:41.520]  The Bell Telephone had ripped out and destroyed everywhere.
[45:41.900 --> 45:44.380]  Except, apparently, in Rick Prelinger's collection.
[45:45.020 --> 45:46.500]  So, I found that little gem.
[45:46.800 --> 45:48.720]  It's called regulating the phone company in your home.
[45:48.840 --> 45:50.860]  It's what really, really, really pissed them off.
[45:51.640 --> 45:52.660]  So, hooray!
[45:52.780 --> 45:53.200]  It lives.
[45:53.760 --> 45:54.900]  This is Henry Lowood.
[45:55.040 --> 45:55.980]  He works in Stanford.
[45:56.700 --> 45:58.020]  On his left, actually, is J.P.
[45:58.120 --> 45:58.400]  Dyson.
[45:58.440 --> 46:00.260]  That's the guy looking really bored with the glasses.
[46:00.600 --> 46:06.620]  He runs the Strong Museum of Play, which just has thousands and thousands and thousands of video games, dolls, and everything else.
[46:06.720 --> 46:09.560]  They have a complete set... complete set of all the Lionel trains.
[46:10.780 --> 46:12.180]  Just an amazing amount of stuff.
[46:12.180 --> 46:14.480]  But, you know, Henry's got some pretty amazing shit.
[46:14.800 --> 46:18.880]  Bob, this Joker attached is going to be calling you somebody at...
[46:19.420 --> 46:19.940]  Regis...
[46:21.000 --> 46:21.520]  Rico...
[46:21.520 --> 46:21.980]  Recommended...
[46:21.980 --> 46:22.260]  Oh, I'm sorry.
[46:23.040 --> 46:24.660]  Regis McKenna recommended us.
[46:25.140 --> 46:26.320]  They're just two guys.
[46:26.480 --> 46:27.240]  They build kits.
[46:27.620 --> 46:28.640]  Operate out of a garage.
[46:30.680 --> 46:31.820]  Wants it for nothing.
[46:33.640 --> 46:36.000]  And on the other side is Steve Jobs' home phone number.
[46:38.700 --> 46:42.160]  This is the original schematic for the Apple One that was... submitted while working at HP to HP that HP rejected.
[46:46.240 --> 46:47.600]  So I got to touch that.
[46:48.680 --> 46:49.720]  Feels like history.
[46:51.500 --> 46:53.480]  You know, I'm doing all sorts of projects.
[46:53.560 --> 46:54.760]  I'm doing all sorts of things.
[46:55.060 --> 46:56.940]  And the thing is, is that...
[46:59.220 --> 47:04.400]  When I say that I work on these projects, I mean that there's a constant stream of things that interest me that I go into.
[47:04.400 --> 47:04.760]  Right?
[47:05.260 --> 47:05.880]  Cray Disc.
[47:06.080 --> 47:29.380]  This is a Cray Disc representational where somebody from Australia rode with it in their lap to take to New York where Dave Fenton used an Arduino-controlled magnetic recorder to record gigabyte-large recordings of this 128-meg disc pack so that we could rescue what may be the last complete version of the Cray OS.
[47:29.980 --> 47:31.960]  This is somebody scanning a Braille Playboy.
[47:32.140 --> 47:33.040]  I thought that was hilarious.
[47:34.940 --> 47:38.420]  There's a whole bunch of people who are working on saving history with stuff like this.
[47:38.620 --> 47:40.160]  Where basically they're emulating...
[47:40.160 --> 47:44.300]  If you look on the bottom, that's how emulators tend to look when it comes to things like the 2600.
[47:44.440 --> 47:45.560]  But that's not how it was.
[47:45.700 --> 47:46.480]  They were these shitty CRTs.
[47:47.500 --> 47:50.360]  So up at the top, people are making software emulation of CRTs.
[47:50.360 --> 47:56.560]  Here's a fully emulated CRT where somebody is emulating all the different aspects of this thing.
[47:57.140 --> 48:02.780]  These are years and years and years of the Game Developers Conference proceedings that I have been digitizing for them.
[48:03.040 --> 48:05.620]  Just everything from the 90s that these people talked on.
[48:06.040 --> 48:08.840]  Many, many, many hours of gaming history.
[48:09.320 --> 48:12.180]  And I'm working on four documentaries right now.
[48:13.300 --> 48:13.780]  Four.
[48:13.940 --> 48:15.100]  Because I'm getting old.
[48:15.720 --> 48:17.780]  And it's time to just get shit done.
[48:17.940 --> 48:19.200]  So one is called Arcade.
[48:19.380 --> 48:21.540]  It's on The Place and the Wonder of Arcades.
[48:21.780 --> 48:23.160]  I have been shooting this for about a year.
[48:24.360 --> 48:25.180]  Under it is tape.
[48:25.440 --> 48:26.300]  The medium of tape.
[48:26.460 --> 48:27.320]  Yes, all of it.
[48:28.300 --> 48:30.080]  Magnetic, audio, magnetic.
[48:30.480 --> 48:30.760]  I'm sorry.
[48:30.840 --> 48:31.920]  Magnetic, audio, and video.
[48:32.180 --> 48:34.020]  Been working on all aspects of it.
[48:34.840 --> 48:35.320]  6502.
[48:35.520 --> 48:37.700]  A documentary on the 6502 chip.
[48:37.700 --> 48:38.720]  The software.
[48:39.340 --> 48:40.200]  I'll tell you, man.
[48:40.300 --> 48:43.700]  Nothing's better than interviewing Bill Budge about pinball construction set.
[48:44.260 --> 48:49.120]  And at the bottom, I'm actually working on a documentary for Defcon which is having its 20th.
[48:49.520 --> 48:50.900]  My rating has gone down.
[48:55.340 --> 48:56.580]  High five to you.
[48:57.100 --> 49:02.160]  And the thing is, I'm on this journey now.
[49:02.160 --> 49:02.560]  Right?
[49:02.740 --> 49:09.600]  This journey of craze and computer emulation and telling of stories.
[49:10.400 --> 49:11.160]  And I wanted somebody...
[49:11.860 --> 49:14.820]  To some people, they're gonna walk out of this and go, well, that was a load of horseshit.
[49:15.220 --> 49:16.060]  That was a lot.
[49:16.300 --> 49:16.980]  Soup was nice.
[49:18.720 --> 49:21.300]  But I also want you to say, here's my journey.
[49:21.460 --> 49:22.220]  That's where I went.
[49:22.380 --> 49:25.700]  I went from the boy who thought he lost everything to the boy who was saving everything.
[49:26.480 --> 49:31.900]  And I want you to remember on your journey that you too can become somebody greater than yourself.
[49:32.080 --> 49:34.200]  Think of the world in a way that you may not have before.
[49:34.360 --> 49:44.100]  And the work that you do being not just some simple self-directed way to make a few more dollars until you wake up wondering why your cell phone has a spa on it.
[49:44.640 --> 49:52.880]  And instead, to start thinking about, what can I do to make my dreams of what the world should be come true?
[49:53.540 --> 49:58.980]  I think that's something that maybe we could walk away from feeling very good about ourselves at the end of the day.
[50:00.980 --> 50:01.660]  Thanks a lot.
[50:01.740 --> 50:02.600]  My name is Jason Scott.
[50:04.660 --> 50:05.780]  This is what I do.
[50:06.320 --> 50:07.640]  Thanks a lot, everyone.
[50:07.900 --> 50:08.240]  Enjoy.