Pointless Nostalgia

Kevin Fisher kgf at golden.net
Sun Jan 27 18:50:54 UTC 2002


On Sun, Jan 27, 2002 at 04:56:08PM +0000, John Hinsley wrote:
[snip]
> 
> 
> I wonder how "pointless" this really is? My guess is that you have the
> sole remaining viable recording (whoever made the show has almost
> certainly overwritten the tape and binned it long since). 

:)  Well, I did copy it digitally to a Hi-8 tape using my digital
camcorder (it has video input).  That's where I made these screen grabs
from.  The actual recording is safe, as I dubbed it back to a new
video tape.  

For some reason I just love this old nostalgic stuff...I've managed to
rescue some other old technology shows that used to air back in 1980.
One of them, called "Fast Forward", has interviews with just about every
luminary imaginable, from Ted Nelson to Isaac Asimov to Freeman Dyson, on
the future of technology.  It's frightening to see how much of what they
predicted actually came true!  (I believe this show was recorded 
before the space shuttle Columbia made it's maiden voyage).

My copy of this particular tape is horrid, but is probably indeed
the last of it's kind...I even contacted TVO about buying a copy
but they won't sell...something about the original copyrights being
expired.  I imagine they'd say the same thing about "Bits and Bytes" since
it was from that era as well.

> 
> It's terrifying to think how much more transient history on digital
> media is than history recorded on papyrus!

I often wonder what must be lurking in the old piles of U-matic tapes
hiding in the basements of certain schools.. there's probably a historic
goldmine there!

> 
> Maybe you could encode it to mpeg, stick it on something else and
> preserve it for another 10 - 20 years?

Indeed, I'd like to do this.  I lack the hardware to do the conversion, but
I know someone who can--I'll try to MPEG the whole thing, if possible.
Of course, my camcorder does support firewire, but I don't know if that's
for the memory stick, or if I can get a pure MPEG feed off of it...

> 
> Cheers
> 
> John
> 
> 
> -- 
> They're afraid, very afraid......
> According to CRN magazine, Microsoft staff discovering Linux in use
> will have now access to a special 'escalation' team.
> http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/16/0310222&mode=nocomment
> 



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