Comments on: On Objects and People http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1258 Jason Scott's Weblog Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:59:02 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Eric http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1258/comment-page-1#comment-4741 Eric Sun, 02 Dec 2007 04:11:31 +0000 http://ascii.textfiles.com/?p=1258#comment-4741 Cool post! I think this is why I find some of the archival work that Google does so fascinating. Looking at the "Timeline View" of my emails in Google Desktop or revisting decades old Usenet posts on Google Groups is still a pale imitation of the genuine article, but in many cases it can be a very cool cross-section of the day-to-day details, whether significant or mundane, that we all leave scattered behind us. (Example: "i'm at the computer lab right now - then i'm going home to wait for my sister - we're going to get a key made for our backdoor, then we'll probably go to the unicorn or something.") But it is a shame that this is ultimately a very limited view into the past, that leaves undocumented things like BBSes and probably millions of CD-Rs with obscure labels like "New Site Assets, V36" and so on. But then again... some things *are* better left unremembered =) Cool post! I think this is why I find some of the archival work that Google does so fascinating. Looking at the “Timeline View” of my emails in Google Desktop or revisting decades old Usenet posts on Google Groups is still a pale imitation of the genuine article, but in many cases it can be a very cool cross-section of the day-to-day details, whether significant or mundane, that we all leave scattered behind us. (Example: “i’m at the computer lab right now – then i’m going home to wait for my sister – we’re going to get a key made for our backdoor, then we’ll probably go to the unicorn or something.”)

But it is a shame that this is ultimately a very limited view into the past, that leaves undocumented things like BBSes and probably millions of CD-Rs with obscure labels like “New Site Assets, V36″ and so on. But then again… some things *are* better left unremembered =)

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