Digital Archaeology of Computing and IT

By Heather Laine

A recent newsletter article in revUp got me thinking about this topic.  It seems extraordinary that already, in just 20 or 30 years, we can be using the word archaeology in connection with computing and IT technology. Surely it’s too soon? We all know what a floppy disc is, don’t we? We remember those 128k Desktop Computers that required a reinforced desk to put them on and a second mortgage to purchase them? I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly not a dinosaur yet!

And yet…

There is a beautiful mountain walk near where I live, up a valley which used to be a big industrial site.  You’d never think it now, until you reach the end of the path, and you see a tall factory chimney rising out of a quiet sheep covered moorland.  Nearby are some old workings and a tourist board notice.  The board dates the workings to the late 1800s.  It says, “It is thought the chimney was associated with ventilation for the mine…” What?  This is only a hundred or so years ago, and we don’t know what it was for?  I guess everybody thought Tom was writing it down…

Around the world there are millions of floppy discs and even older media quietly rotting in landfill sites, cellars, attics and forgotten cupboards.  I have a bunch of them myself, and I certainly no longer have any kind of computer that could run them.  That data is gone as far as I am concerned.  Hope it wasn’t important!

There is a vast store of data out there, on somewhat perishable media, and within a few years there will be virtually no machines left capable of reading it.  Most of it undoubtedly is dross but there must be a huge body of work worth saving.

With the advent of Mobile, many games that were written for what today are regarded as extremely low spec machines have a new venue.  Mobile devices need games that pay some attention to size and speed, offering a home to those much loved games you played way back when 128k was a lot of memory.

Perhaps even more transient and in need of preservation are historic and ground breaking websites.  Do you remember your first web browsing experience?  Come a long way since then, haven’t we!  I vividly remember the hamster dance, possibly one of the earliest internet memes.  I was mesmerised – I’d never seen anything like it.  It was a big step along the road to making websites move and sing, and it would be a huge shame if the youth of today could not experience the joy of 4 repeating hamsters cycling through 4 gif images to a sped up Disney tune!  When I came to hunt for the link for this article however, it was not easy to find anything resembling the original.  

The hamsterdance.com site is now a sleek modern version with merchandise galore (and to my mind totally lacking the charm of the original).  The link I did find for you is a reconstruction.  Unlike books, websites leave no physical trace when they are overwritten or erased, and unless consideration is given now to preserving and recording the history of the internet, much will be completely lost.

Do we care?  Should we care?  Obviously we cannot and probably should not attempt to preserve everything.  But if in 50 years’ time little Johnny in his digital immersion world holotexts his grandma to ask “How did the internet get the way it is today?” I think it would be a good thing to be able to answer that question.