zip

[Randy McLaughlin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin Handy" <kth at srv.net>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" 
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: zip


> Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>
>>So tell me then how to read the information from a Quipu.  It's a simple
>>device: just a bunch of multi-colored knotted string.  If you can figure
>>this out, there's a huge community of archaeologists who study the Incas
>>who would erect a permanent shrine for you to celebrate your name for all
>>eternity.
>>
> This is my point. The quipu was apparently their equivalent of our
> spreadsheet. They were easy for them to use, and easily understood.
> They aren't even "compressed", "tarred", or "zipped", but still lost.
> Once many could "write"/read them, and they were meant for long
> term archival use (at least many seem to have been archived). As
> easy as it was for them, and as important as they thought these
> documents were, we are unable to read them.
>
> They thought it was good for long term storage, but we haven't a clue
> as to how to read them. What is so different about computer archives,
> no matter how simple it seems to us, that ours wouldn't suffer the
> same fate.
>
>> The ancient Egyptians were by all measures a fairly advanced society for
>> their place in history, yet the only reason we know how to read their
>> heiroglyphic writings is because we found teh Rosetta Stone that 
>> basically
>> translated it for us.  Again, you cannot assume English will be known in
>> the future.
>
> Same point. The Egyptians thought it was good enough, and easy
> enough, for use as a long term archive (see all the obelisks they made). 
> We still lost the understanding of how to understand them. How much 
> simpler can you get than "cartoons" carved in stone?
> Yet we still lost the ability to read them for a thousand+ years.
> Will there be a Rosetta  stone to help future people to understand a long 
> lost CP/M archive?  I don't care how "simple" you think a storage format 
> is, it won't help it in the long run.
>
> The archive should be for our own use, not some theoretical
> idiot 2000 years from now trying to boot a Kaypro. He's
> probably going to have a whole different set of problems with an archive 
> than we could conceive; like locating
> the "any" key.

Now it's time to come back to the true definition of a library:

A library is a living archive.  It is meant to archive the data and keep up 
to date with what it takes to make sense of it.

We tend to thing of the most common form of the library, the library we are 
used to entering:  The lending library.

While lending libraries are the most common the act of lending books is not 
the original concept nor the only use of libraries.

Libraries are a repository of knowledge.

The trick to archiving classic computer knowledge to gather it into an 
archive and keep librarians that constantly try to keep the most current 
Rosetta stone with it.  As newer archival tools become available it is up to 
the librarian/archivist to transfer the data preserving its knowledge.

It truly doesn't matter how it is archived but common sense is a good way to 
go:

Use multiple methods, I keep my archives on the internet, multiple 
computers, and CD's.  On the computers I keep the packaged and include the 
tools to unarchive them.

Use current tools so people in the future don't have to be able to read 
Sanskrit to unarchive them.

When newer better tools come out unarchive the packages and repackage under 
the new tools.  Currently all over the world scientists are constantly 
repairing books that keep deteriorating, we need to do the same with our 
archives.

When emulators that work with the archival data are available add them to 
your archive so people in the future have a chance to understand how the 
hardware is supposed to work.


Randy
www.s100-manuals.com