Stumbled into this online and it fired up the nostalgic geek in me. It’s no secret (or it shouldn’t be anyway) that we ditch old technology like handful of disposable dishcloths and don?t think twice about it, but we should. So, it?s no surprise that we don?t think about old media either, but we should.
Remember those old ditto machines in the secretary?s office before photocopiers? Gone. The phenakistoscope. The teleharmonium. The Edison wax cylinder. The stereopticon. The Panorama. Early 20th century electric searchlight spectacles. All gone and soon to be forgotten, but the Dead Media Project is fighting to keep their memory alive.
The archive is the brianspawn of Richard Kadrey and Bruce Sterling, and they envision the end product to be a coffee-table-like creation that will have book store managers struggling to define and catalogue (?Do we have a section for photography/computers/traffic signals/ancient Chinese history??)
The problem is that these two authors are too busy to write the book, so they?re placing an open call to anyone who wants to compile and create the Dead Media Handbook. Interested? Then, visit www.deadmedia.org, sign up for their DeadMediaList and get researching.
Don?t forget to save a spot for the web, because at Bruce Sterling puts it:
“How long will it be before the much-touted World Wide Web interface is itself a dead medium? And what will become of all those billions of thoughts, words, images and expressions poured onto the Internet? Won’t they vanish just like the vile lacquered smoke from a burning pile of junked Victrolas?”
He’s got a point.
