Sometimes I think end up thinking about personal digital archaeology as an adventure; I enjoyed the Indiana Jones movies, showing a daring archaeologist launching into the unknown. On this site, I'm going to try making some notes about some simple adventures about going and rescuing personal artifacts. It would be nice if there were a movie about the adventures of a daring digital archaeologist. Maybe you can star in the movie? You might call it: Indiana Jones and the Box-Filled Room
or Raiders of the Lost Art (c: My goal is to inspire you. Indiana Jones: Let us Know of Your Adventures If I inspire you to try something, will you please write in and tell me about it? Or better yet, please start a blog and send me a link for a blog post, or "friend" me on Facebook, and send me a link to a Note. You can start a free blog at blogger.com, and its easy to sign up for Facebook. If you need some help: see social networking spaces - all author proceeds to support the kind of learning material you find on this site. Better yet - I can sweet the deal. Please feel free to ask questions. Check out the Toolbox section, see if I cover something you're curious about. But by all means, ask questions. I'll answer them by posting the answers on the site, so others can benefit. To get started:
I used to be on AOL. We won't say how long I was on AOL. Then, I used Outlook for a long time. I swore by Outlook, never wanted to touch any other email program. Gmail? Bah! I loved outlook. Then I started using the Gmail search plug-in for outlook, and was surprised to find how *good* the search capability was (I could actually find old emails). Then I was like, what the heck, ok, I'll use Gmail. I gradually discovered that for me, it's the best option out there - and I really appreciate all the free integrated features, like Calendar, etc. - so no, I don't own any Google stock (I wish), and I don't even work for Google (I wish I did) - I just have found their tools very helpful. And here's a tidbit if you stuck with me this long because you're like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog's Day ("Me . . . me . . . also me . . . .).
 Then if you really get into this hand-written letter thing, write a letter to Steve Jobs and thank him for helping to bring the iPad into the world:  And while you're at it, write to Steve Wozniak too, shown below at a science fair. Steve Wozniak helped to found Apple. He hasn't been in the limelight - hasn't even been at Apple - but he cares about education. He actually got in line at the San Jose Apple Store when the iPad launched, to wait in line, for an iPad. That kind of humility blows my mind.  Have you noticed how I keep putting pictures in here? Have I drawn your interest? Well . . . your life is interesting too. Here's a picture of some treasure, in a garage:  It's a picture of Steve Jobs on the left, and Steve Wozniak, on the right. It's the beginning of Apple Computer, and it started in a garage. Want to know a funny thing? So there is this lady Dorothy Raymond, who is the original owner of a 1969 Volkswagen Van, which is going to end up as a kind of living exhibit in the Digital Archaeology Institute. The van, and Dorothy, are featured in a blog called http://2069.us. Dorothy is a great lady, 85 years old, and the original owner of this van, which she originally bought up in Oregon. And the funny thing is, I was talking on the phone with her, and she has some fun stories. One of them is her description of living in a plum grove in Cupertino, California, and then these various electronic companies start popping up, and one of them is Apple Computer. So I can't help but imagine Dorothy driving around Cupertino, California, and maybe Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak's car is broken down on the side of the road, and they've got some electronic parts, and they're on their way home to work on making a personal computer. So Dorothy, being the kind lady she is, pulls over, and they load up the van. It's so close to being plausible that I don't even want to ask her!  Dorothy was an interior designer, and worked on a number of homes in various parts of California. She put the van in question up on eBay, I picked it up, and it's the basis for http://2069.us.  Would you like another fun anecdote? Well when I mailed Dorothy a check recently to cover some costs associated with transferring the van, I used the return address of the Wizard, Emerald City. And when I talked to her on the phone, she had indeed seen Wizard of Oz when it came out in the theaters. It was the first time many people had seen a color film, and it started out black and white (in Kansas - see this clip of Over the Rainbow), and then in the movie, there's a transition to color. So anyway, in this world of digital archaeology and changing formats, it seems wholeheartedly appropriate that the original owner of the van is named Dorothy. Did you notice the transition from black and white photos to color on this page? ::wink:: So Dorothy is keeping active, and she was kind enough to send some pictures for me to scan. And Dorothy likes to garden. But the real question is, what do you like to do? What did you like to do? Or let's put it another way: ask yourself, what does ________ like to do? (relative, friend, grandparent, child) And we can even supply the dialog:
The point is, everyone's got stories. And everyone has pictures too - even if they're just mental pictures. Personally, it feels like gathering stories from elders is the most urgent thing to do, and it feels like maybe if you have a limited amount of time and energy, maybe it's good to put as much of it as you can towards celebrating peoples' lives, while they are alive. And I also think it's important to gather your own stories. Everyone's got stories, remember? Even me:
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Wanted: Indiana Jones |