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OASIS at SXSW: An Asking Thing —

Every time I’ve spoken at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, I’ve always had someone else arranging all the details, including the panel and the attendant responsibilities of getting it to pass muster. This time, however, I’ve put together something neat, and the process needs, nay, requires you to really get out there and pound the pavement.

I’m a busy person and endless pavement pounding is not my usual deal, but if you are so inclined, and since the deadline to vote ends within a week, I’d like to call your attention to the SXSW “Panel Picker” and a proposed on-stage conversation to be held between two very odd retro-oriented folks.

Here’s the full information:

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/38216

In Ernest Cline’s novel READY PLAYER ONE, the world’s population spends most of its time inside the OASIS, a simulator and ultimate operating system that provides access to an endless amount of games, videos and media to the world. At the Internet Archive, a non-profit dedicated to open access to as much content as possible, a new in-browser interface allows instant access to tens of thousands of microcomputer programs, console games, and emulated vintage hardware. Author Ernest Cline and Internet Archive’s software curator Jason Scott discuss the similarities between OASIS and the Archive, the consequences and results of a world with endless vintage computing access, and what parts of the 1980s they’re working the hardest to save.

It’ll help if you have read Ready Player One, so there’s Ernest Cline’s page about it. It is a fun novel about a world where, among other things, endless amounts of old videogames are available.

It’ll also help if you are aware of the Console Living Room, a project I’ve spearheaded where, among other things, endless amounts of old videogames are available.

The SXSW system made me go through an enormous amount of hoops to get into that panel picker. They have a very large amount of things you have to read and describe, and it appears that having a panel of a guy from Austin (Ernest) and a guy from NY (Me) throws us a few rungs back, but my hope is the surreal experience of a book coming true and what that means for the world at large, will overcome that.

The deadline to vote is at midnight tonight. I couldn’t bring myself to do the massive amount of canvasing to beg for votes that I think is being encouraged. So my hope is you will vote if you want to, and if not, we’ll figure something out. Ernest and I have a mutual admiration and I look forward to doing stuff with him in the future.

Anyway, vote before Midnight, or leave a comment, or whatever floats your 1980s-loving boat. Thanks.


Categorised as: computer history | jason his own self

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