Preserving the Future

It's almost impossible for us to wrap our heads around the fact that it was 35 years ago when we started publishing.  There are people who work on this magazine who are older now than their parents were back in those early days.  While we've always appealed to a multi-generational audience, it gets so much more interesting when time gets factored in.

We were founded because we had a great desire to preserve the history that was being made around us.  Back then, hacking as we know it was in its infancy and most communication was achieved through computer bulletin boards, where only one person could connect at a time and the speed was generally a whopping 300 baud.  But contained within these early home computers were fascinating stories and experiences that spoke of the evolving technology that was captivating a growing number of people around the world.  Of course, it was so much harder for the world to communicate with itself back then.  Phone phreaks were able to meet this challenge through the use of Blue Boxes and hacked long distance codes.  Hackers began to access Packet Switched Networks (PSN) to communicate across continents using other people's computers without having to make long distance telephone calls.  It was all illegal, but it was also so obviously the right thing to do in order to take the next step.  Had we waited for technology to be figured out by those in charge - who would then ration it out to us civilians - we would have lost so much precious time and been forced to play by far more restrictive rules, where the artificial confines of distance would be held onto for far longer.  Patience isn't always a virtue.

Being able to communicate in ways most people believed to be impossible gave us access to the stories and the people that made this world so fascinating to us.  Seeing an eloquent description of what it was like to go trashing outside a telephone switch in Ohio was something you would have had to have called a local BBS to see.  You would have to have called another system to read about the thrill of exploring inside a government computer network that some kid in Boston was writing about.  And yet another one to find out about the nightmares of dealing with an independent phone company in the heart of Texas.

These stories were fleeting as most are.  We knew that if what we were impassioned by was at all interesting, these stories would be devoured by people in other parts of the country - and perhaps even the world.  They might actually be of interest to individuals who knew little or nothing about the technology.  That is the magic of preservation.  You never know who you might be preserving something for, whether it's a person in a distant land or someone who hasn't even been born yet.  We honestly didn't recognize that significance in 1984.  We just wanted to share the subjects we thought were interesting and put them down on paper.  Since then, we've learned that these things really last and are applicable to scenarios that weren't even dreamed of when the idea first took hold.

Preserving history always seems to be the thing that gets neglected.  We discard valuable artifacts or mislabel as junk the items that can really teach us something down the road.  While it's relatively easy to accumulate a huge pile of old telephones and computers, along with a stack of National Geographic back issues that touch the ceiling, what's difficult is keeping track of it all, noting the specific characteristics, defining the significance, and making it accessible so others can benefit from the knowledge derived from these relics of the past.  It's almost certain to be an uphill battle - but it nearly always pays off in one way or another.

One myth which continues to circulate is that digitization is a guarantee of preservation.  While correct in theory, it couldn't be more wrong in practice.  Between upgrades, version incompatibilities, an overabundance of data, and an often nonexistent method of maintaining countless files and collections, we actually see more history being lost due to these factors than we did in the analog world.  That's because we are overconfident that simply digitizing something is enough to make it last forever.  It's not.  You may have in your collection some old printed photographs from relatives many decades ago.  But try and find the photos you took on that first digital camera you used back in the 1990s.  The connectors, file formats, and software have all changed, so if you didn't copy them and keep track of them through the different computers and operating systems you've been through, it's quite possible they're lost.  Even if they're not, they may be virtually impossible to read.  How about accessing an old text file that you kept on your ancient Amiga system - or even Windows 95?  It's just not as simple as finding an old diary in the attic.

And these are the simple things.  Running software that used to work on old computers isn't something that's going to happen by default; it takes a special effort and commitment to preserve these bits of history.  It's easy to keep an old book or a cassette tape and have them continue to be accessible for as long as you can keep them from falling apart.  Digital archiving comes with its own set of challenges that are too often overlooked.

In much the same way that the digital and analog approaches are both necessary, we've found that the old and the new also complement each other.  We've made the point a number of times over the years that it's foolish to discard one for the other.  We need digital and analog to work together.  New technology in conjunction with old technology is what lasts, not stubbornly holding onto one.

The same can be said for variety within the tech we use, regardless of age.  Having a wide assortment of devices, operating systems, and telecommunication options ensures that we will develop and evolve by recognizing what's good in one and finding a way to apply it in another.  When we become zealots for one system over another and refuse to even consider what an alternative has to offer, we sadly follow in the tradition of zealotry everywhere, which nearly always winds up in a big mess.

This year we will be finishing the initial digitization of our entire back issue collection.  Those of you who have been part of this will appreciate the incredible history that we have lived through since we first started publishing.  And, while this has been a massive undertaking that required a lot of extra effort from much of our staff, it has proven to be incredibly rewarding.  Being able to look back and relive developments in networking, telecommunications, the ever-developing hacker culture, and our planet in general has injected us, not only with enthusiasm, but perspective for everything new that transpires.  Having a sense of the history is what truly guarantees you're moving forward while developing something new.

We can point to so many lost opportunities in other places: old movies and television programs discarded by studios who couldn't imagine people caring about them in the future, overstocked books from libraries or bookstores being destroyed instead of donated to potential readers, personal collections of vinyl and video thrown into a Dumpster when they become too much to deal with.  The potential for future lost opportunities involving purely digital mediums is even greater.  We've already witnessed instances of websites and social networks that shut down and erase all of the pages and conversations that had formed a community for so many.  Without a method of maintaining and curating our collections, we stand a significant risk of mass purges that quietly wipe out valuable bits of our history.

The one common fact we always seem to come back to is that those involved in making history never seem to recognize that at the time.  They assume someone else is keeping track of various milestones for posterity, which is often the case for truly big developments.  But history doesn't discriminate between large and small.  There's relevance to be found in the tiniest of interactions or creations.  And while we shouldn't obsess over holding on to every bit of media and every file we've ever created, we would be well served to have methods of ensuring their accessibility for future generations so that they can help decide what really mattered.

Looking back on 35 years of publishing and on our nearly complete digitization efforts, we're amazed at what's already happened and thrilled at the prospect that present and future generations will benefit from the story.  We hope there are many more stories to tell.