[00:02.690 --> 00:09.450]  Hi, this is Iggy Pop, and you're listening to WBAI in New York, the voice of truth.
[00:10.670 --> 00:18.830]  I took a pounding from the radio today.
[00:19.290 --> 00:29.350]  I heard the radio say it over and over, and there was no escape.
[00:31.690 --> 00:37.050]  This is WBAI 99.5 FM in New York, and this is Iggy Pop.
[00:38.830 --> 00:39.710]  That's right.
[00:40.490 --> 00:42.690]  And it's time now for Off the Hook.
[00:44.290 --> 00:44.910]  Really?
[02:11.880 --> 02:13.420]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:13.560 --> 02:14.320]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:14.420 --> 02:17.560]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
[02:17.840 --> 02:18.520]  Hey, what's up?
[02:18.720 --> 02:19.160]  Alex.
[02:19.560 --> 02:19.940]  Good evening.
[02:20.180 --> 02:22.400]  And our very special guest, Jason Scott.
[02:22.960 --> 02:23.400]  Salutations.
[02:23.700 --> 02:28.580]  Jason's from the Internet Archive, where you save everything.
[02:29.020 --> 02:29.840]  Everything we can.
[02:30.360 --> 02:37.160]  And, you know, it's more than just data, more than just physical content.
[02:38.200 --> 02:44.740]  Not to be too overdramatic, but I think you're saving a bit of our souls, because where else do we go to find these things?
[02:44.800 --> 02:50.360]  Can you give us some examples of the things that you're able to hold on to that others have simply forgotten about?
[02:50.360 --> 02:52.460]  Oh, the vital, the vital things in life.
[02:52.580 --> 03:00.820]  My favorite is a, uh, the favorite, the recent one was a, uh, a fellow in the UK who, uh, back in 2002, he took home a pile of spam faxes.
[03:01.460 --> 03:02.340]  Spam faxes.
[03:02.620 --> 03:06.680]  Spam faxes, because the other side was blank and he wanted his children to doodle on it, but they didn't.
[03:06.800 --> 03:09.820]  He had 500 different spam faxes.
[03:10.080 --> 03:13.000]  He scanned them in about two months ago and we put them up.
[03:13.160 --> 03:14.200]  Now this is from what year?
[03:14.860 --> 03:15.220]  2002.
[03:16.040 --> 03:18.040]  So we're talking quite some time ago.
[03:18.280 --> 03:24.560]  I find that things, when you save things, first of all, when you're saving things, people think you're crazy and they don't want anything to do with you.
[03:24.640 --> 03:28.060]  But then when 20 years go by, all of a sudden it's interesting.
[03:28.480 --> 03:28.640]  Yeah.
[03:28.860 --> 03:42.720]  And, and I mean, there's some level of nostalgia, but sometimes there's just this thing where you suddenly realize with the view across the decades or the centuries of, oh, we have thematic, uh, problems and triumphs.
[03:43.200 --> 03:46.780]  Like for instance, uh, there's a scam in these, uh, faxes.
[03:47.000 --> 03:51.480]  Imagine that where you are told about a question that's being pulled.
[03:51.660 --> 03:51.880]  Okay.
[03:52.020 --> 03:54.780]  And if you call this number, you're voting yes.
[03:55.000 --> 03:56.740]  And if you call that number, you're voting no.
[03:56.940 --> 04:00.480]  But what you're really doing is you're spending two or three pounds a minute.
[04:00.900 --> 04:01.340]  Wow.
[04:01.500 --> 04:02.780]  So it's a special type of number.
[04:02.920 --> 04:03.060]  Yeah.
[04:03.100 --> 04:06.940]  So as a result, it's if you vote yes or you vote no, they win anyway.
[04:07.200 --> 04:12.000]  And the questions are, should there be more immigration to the UK?
[04:12.700 --> 04:15.540]  Should there be fox hunting in the UK?
[04:15.700 --> 04:15.880]  Uh huh.
[04:15.880 --> 04:17.120]  Things people feel strongly about.
[04:17.380 --> 04:18.560]  Strongly about in 2002.
[04:18.860 --> 04:23.680]  Along with like lots of price lists and here's what we're selling and you should come on this vacation.
[04:23.960 --> 04:29.740]  And so it's this window into what they thought people would react to back in 2002.
[04:30.000 --> 04:32.020]  So that's, you know, it's 500 faxes.
[04:32.280 --> 04:32.900]  They're just up there.
[04:33.540 --> 04:33.680]  Um.
[04:33.900 --> 04:37.980]  Who would think to save, you know, uh, junk faxes, spam faxes.
[04:38.320 --> 04:47.280]  Well, like I said, literally this dad named Rob who just was going through his office, uh, a couple months ago and just went, Oh, I, I never threw these out.
[04:47.840 --> 04:50.140]  And he just said, well, maybe I'll scan them.
[04:50.460 --> 04:55.080]  And he scanned them and, and, and I grabbed them because I knew they were going to disappear again.
[04:55.240 --> 04:58.880]  You know, I just, people do it and then they think, Oh, well, I hosted it somewhere.
[04:59.120 --> 05:01.080]  And then they forget about it and the hosting goes away.
[05:01.180 --> 05:05.920]  So you think things are going to last forever, but they don't, especially digital things, digital things disappear.
[05:06.340 --> 05:11.060]  People seem to think it's forever, but you know, try finding that first photo you took in a digital camera.
[05:11.220 --> 05:11.600]  Oh yeah.
[05:11.640 --> 05:21.580]  No, I, I always think about how with digital, the big difference is it's really easy to copy, but it's also super easy to obliterate forever.
[05:21.960 --> 05:31.020]  So if you, you know, make a billion copies and everyone's got a copy of that same, you know, weird GIF from the, uh, nineties, it's great.
[05:31.140 --> 05:33.320]  It'll live forever because it's in everyone's hard drive.
[05:33.480 --> 05:40.700]  But if your copy of your screenplay or your baby photos or anything are digital and that's gone, it's gone.
[05:41.000 --> 05:43.480]  It isn't, there's no pulling it back.
[05:43.620 --> 05:45.800]  And I think that's, you know, we took that bet.
[05:45.940 --> 05:47.220]  We said that that was acceptable.
[05:47.600 --> 05:51.380]  Uh, I'm really hoping we have more advancements and more permanent storage.
[05:51.500 --> 05:56.380]  Cause right now we're depending on a lot of flash and a lot of, uh, spinning metal.
[05:56.600 --> 05:57.260]  About that.
[05:57.380 --> 06:02.200]  Like what, what kinds of things are you thinking, um, should be emphasized more as far as storage?
[06:02.480 --> 06:14.820]  Like I've, I've looked at like, well, I don't know what you, maybe you could tell us like, what, where are we, um, where do we have the gaps in, in, in our, um, either cost or sizes or, or, or, um, development?
[06:15.080 --> 06:17.200]  So there's several problems going on.
[06:17.260 --> 06:21.940]  First of all, with advancements in space being that we can now each have a terabyte or more.
[06:22.120 --> 06:28.180]  That means that many of us are filling up a terabyte with just whatever we feel like, which means we don't know.
[06:28.420 --> 06:38.980]  Like, like it's one thing if you had a couple, you know, rolls of film and you had a shoebox full of photos as the old days, you knew that shoebox was important.
[06:39.200 --> 06:46.660]  You knew that the five boxes of old raincoats wasn't as important, but imagine you just kept them all in one huge box.
[06:46.900 --> 06:48.120]  And that's what we do now.
[06:48.120 --> 06:49.860]  We put everything on there.
[06:49.980 --> 06:51.240]  So how is a person to know?
[06:51.260 --> 07:00.140]  And we just haven't developed any of the discipline to know like, Oh, this is my special folder and it's always called this and I will always keep track of it.
[07:00.320 --> 07:09.260]  We haven't done, or if grandma's gone, you know, in 20 years, we don't, we don't always know to go, we got to go down to her windows folder and find her documents folder.
[07:09.380 --> 07:21.000]  And that's the thing when, when people do pass away and they have, um, uh, you know, computers with passwords or encrypted folders, maybe your grandmother doesn't have an encrypted folder yet, but one day she will, one day you will have a grandmother that,
[07:21.000 --> 07:22.560]  that knows how to use encryption.
[07:22.560 --> 07:24.680]  And there's probably quite a few out there that already do.
[07:24.940 --> 07:32.800]  Uh, and we'll be faced with, um, with a bit of a problem in that we can get those, those memories, those, those artifacts from the past.
[07:33.020 --> 07:33.300]  Right.
[07:33.440 --> 07:36.020]  And people are thinking about this and we're thinking about it.
[07:36.100 --> 07:41.340]  I mean, part of it is just educating people that, that digital is not by its very nature.
[07:41.540 --> 07:44.260]  It doesn't protect itself any more than any other medium.
[07:44.500 --> 07:49.420]  Like it's not inherently, you know, it doesn't have any aspects of that.
[07:49.520 --> 07:52.360]  It just has easy copying and ubiquity.
[07:52.360 --> 07:52.940]  That's it.
[07:53.020 --> 07:57.320]  But we are already discovering it's harder and harder to read CDs, right?
[07:57.500 --> 07:58.700]  CDs are starting to go away.
[07:59.120 --> 08:04.660]  CDRs, I wouldn't put anything on a CDR and I would get everything on a CDR off as soon as possible.
[08:04.920 --> 08:08.700]  But wait till we start having flash or USB sticks die.
[08:08.880 --> 08:09.800]  That'll be interesting.
[08:10.000 --> 08:10.140]  Yeah.
[08:10.180 --> 08:13.360]  I mean, we're, we're very, we like that.
[08:13.500 --> 08:15.440]  Um, we like that narrative.
[08:15.480 --> 08:18.000]  We like the phrase saved forever.
[08:18.100 --> 08:20.480]  That's very, very alluring.
[08:20.660 --> 08:23.080]  And Apple started using it back in the early eighties.
[08:23.240 --> 08:25.940]  They would say, put this on this floppy and it's saved forever.
[08:26.400 --> 08:34.760]  And you can see the language, you know, shift around, uh, in earlier, earlier years, save came into play.
[08:34.760 --> 08:43.940]  And I, I used to research this, which was why I weirdly know about it, that there used to be the phrase unsave, which meant delete, like just for a short period of time.
[08:44.080 --> 08:50.980]  But now, um, the, the marketing and the language in the eighties was, oh yeah, trust this weird little plastic floppy disk.
[08:51.160 --> 08:52.540]  It saves it forever.
[08:53.300 --> 08:55.360]  And there was never going to be a forever.
[08:55.580 --> 08:59.040]  Even if you could read a floppy disk, uh, good luck finding a floppy disk reader.
[08:59.620 --> 09:00.020]  Right.
[09:00.200 --> 09:01.560]  Well, that's the other problem, right?
[09:01.700 --> 09:09.740]  Besides them dying themselves, we're absolutely now at the point where, uh, there are, uh, a lot of mediums that are gone.
[09:10.140 --> 09:26.640]  And, and to tell you how crazy it is, I went to a place called Living Computer Museum in Seattle, and they're working on this technology where they're taking VAX and mainframe era disk platters, and they're just reading them with essentially a electron level magnetic reader.
[09:26.860 --> 09:27.920]  And just...
[09:27.920 --> 09:32.440]  So like a microscope or beams, um, instead of actually having a physical right head?
[09:32.440 --> 09:32.860]  Right.
[09:33.080 --> 09:43.720]  So they'll take a 120 megabyte, uh, disk platter and read a one terabyte image and then read that terabyte image basically like a book.
[09:43.800 --> 09:47.580]  The bit level of the platter, kind of like an x-ray of a archaeological find.
[09:47.740 --> 09:54.660]  The person working on it describes that the problem is bad enough that if they turn any of these 90 percent, they're, they'll just crumble.
[09:54.940 --> 10:00.100]  Like because of the, you know, the 90 degrees, I mean, you know, they'll just make a pile.
[10:00.540 --> 10:01.920]  Because the magnets are gone.
[10:02.040 --> 10:03.040]  It's like restoring old films.
[10:03.200 --> 10:09.260]  We're watching films from the turn of the, of the, uh, uh, 20th century in 1900, and it's amazing how many were lost.
[10:09.380 --> 10:12.780]  How many things that you'd think would be kept forever just weren't.
[10:12.900 --> 10:24.960]  And, and we're seeing the same thing with music, with, uh, uh, television shows, with our own media, pictures, uh, just because something is saved someplace does not mean it's going to be there forever or even for a decade.
[10:25.220 --> 10:25.360]  Right.
[10:25.440 --> 10:33.360]  Which is why, uh, at the archive there's a lot of focus on, you know, people get kind of hung up sometimes with the archive that we have a lot of ephemera.
[10:33.540 --> 10:36.020]  And I'm like, well, ephemera has no advocate.
[10:36.220 --> 10:39.220]  Like we all want to save Beyonce forever.
[10:39.220 --> 10:41.080]  We all know who she is.
[10:41.180 --> 10:44.820]  We all have a reaction to that name or something and we'll remember it.
[10:44.920 --> 10:50.980]  But nobody remembers this one person who kept like a home movie or a video of something really unique.
[10:50.980 --> 10:58.840]  It walked around the floor of a company that's famous now before it shut down and rescuing those one of a kind items.
[10:59.200 --> 11:01.820]  That's what I think we really have a good strength in.
[11:01.940 --> 11:03.600]  We're not... we don't ask why.
[11:03.600 --> 11:06.360]  We ask how fast, you know, how quickly.
[11:06.840 --> 11:11.560]  You know, another thing that this brings to mind is, you know, all these sort of defunct operating systems too.
[11:11.760 --> 11:13.460]  You know, what about things like OS2?
[11:13.580 --> 11:15.060]  Remember OS2 warp?
[11:15.280 --> 11:18.240]  And, uh, you mentioned VaxVMS machines.
[11:18.500 --> 11:19.920]  And remember Gopher servers?
[11:19.920 --> 11:21.880]  You know, this sort of precursor to the web.
[11:22.060 --> 11:26.320]  I mean, I'm, you wonder whatever happened to all the content that used to be on these Gopher servers.
[11:26.660 --> 11:32.400]  It's sitting in an item on the Internet Archive in a like 20 or 30 gigabyte TAR file.
[11:32.560 --> 11:32.780]  Fantastic.
[11:32.780 --> 11:33.940]  Which says Gopher space.
[11:34.160 --> 11:35.540]  And they pulled it all up.
[11:35.660 --> 11:39.380]  And every once in a while, someone unpacks it and makes it live again to some extent.
[11:39.840 --> 11:40.240]  Fantastic.
[11:40.240 --> 11:50.620]  You know, that, that kind of stuff where, um, we're, software is its own weird thing because I think that software is an important cultural force that hasn't been recognized yet.
[11:51.020 --> 11:55.820]  And I describe it like, imagine we didn't think paintings were important until 1960.
[11:56.540 --> 11:57.980]  Like, what would we do?
[11:58.040 --> 11:59.900]  And people are like, why would you do that?
[11:59.960 --> 12:01.060]  They're just wall coverings.
[12:01.160 --> 12:04.960]  And you would start driving around going, could you give me your paintings that you're throwing out?
[12:04.960 --> 12:23.580]  And we're kind of doing that now with, um, you know, the archive has like crates and crates of CD-ROMs that people are giving us and old shareware CDs and old software packages, always getting people donating them to us so that we can image them, put them up and analyze them because it turns out everything's buried in them.
[12:23.660 --> 12:23.740]  Yeah.
[12:23.800 --> 12:31.580]  And this kind of thing is not uncommon because, uh, the BBC, for instance, remember they destroyed all their television programs in the sixties because they thought no one was ever going to want to see them again.
[12:31.580 --> 12:35.720]  Uh, same thing for old films and, and, um, virtually everything you can imagine.
[12:35.940 --> 12:39.840]  Uh, people assume, why would anybody care about this in the future?
[12:39.980 --> 12:41.240]  This is just living for the present.
[12:41.500 --> 12:41.600]  Sure.
[12:41.720 --> 12:55.700]  One of my favorite collections at the archive, uh, Rick Bellinger had this, was there was a unnamed warehouse in the tri-state area that had all of these B-roll, uh, footage reels from, uh, movies of the forties and fifties.
[12:55.840 --> 13:01.000]  So this would be like, they'd send a crew out to like shoot western scenes for the western movie.
[13:01.000 --> 13:07.960]  And it would just be people walking back and forth on horses or going through a city and showing the city at night so they could have a line in.
[13:08.060 --> 13:10.640]  And then they just took all these reels and just left them in a warehouse.
[13:10.860 --> 13:12.120]  Uh, and he got them.
[13:12.320 --> 13:14.340]  He got like a truckload of them, two truckloads actually.
[13:14.560 --> 13:17.580]  And we've been putting them up and they're really weird and surreal.
[13:17.940 --> 13:19.400]  And you don't know the value.
[13:19.560 --> 13:20.200]  Like, yeah, sure.
[13:20.220 --> 13:24.460]  It's weird to see somebody dressed in like regular forties clothing, like hit a clapper.
[13:25.020 --> 13:30.940]  And this actually gets your brain going is there's one where it's a guy, like I said, he's dressed obviously like someone from the forties.
[13:31.060 --> 13:36.540]  He hits the clapper, he gets out of the way and you realize, Oh, I think this is what the West was like.
[13:36.980 --> 13:41.160]  Even though this is the 1940s and people are just wandering around in costume.
[13:41.420 --> 13:45.320]  None of these people ever lived in that period, but that becomes our memory.
[13:45.880 --> 13:56.820]  And there's a, there's a diner shot and the diner shot has these cars going by and people commenting on it are listing what the cars are like, Oh, there goes a Ford Fairlane.
[13:56.940 --> 13:57.900]  Oh, there's 19 whatever.
[13:58.200 --> 13:58.340]  Wow.
[13:58.540 --> 14:00.880]  So they're finding all this weird value in it.
[14:01.000 --> 14:06.900]  And it's, you know, the hardest thing with archiving is, you know, a lot of places professionally will justify it.
[14:07.000 --> 14:08.960]  You have to justify it or you don't get the funding.
[14:09.280 --> 14:11.240]  And we try to step back from that.
[14:11.360 --> 14:15.320]  We say, well, if this is important enough to one person, let's grab it and let's see what happens.
[14:15.520 --> 14:24.280]  And then we find out later, you know, the, I discussed that with you years ago, the Kmart tapes where they had the tapes that were playing in Kmarts.
[14:24.400 --> 14:25.780]  Well, now, you know, Kmart's gone.
[14:26.040 --> 14:27.320]  So here's this record.
[14:27.500 --> 14:27.860]  Kmart's gone?
[14:28.060 --> 14:29.020]  It's essentially gone.
[14:29.540 --> 14:30.700]  There's one downtown, isn't there?
[14:31.100 --> 14:32.480]  There's a few lingering ones.
[14:32.520 --> 14:32.680]  Okay.
[14:32.820 --> 14:33.480]  Yeah, I think so.
[14:33.580 --> 14:34.640]  I think near Penn Station.
[14:34.640 --> 14:35.960]  I might have missed a bankruptcy somewhere.
[14:36.520 --> 14:37.420]  Let's put it this way.
[14:37.520 --> 14:44.840]  To me, if you've got, you know, a handful of lingering shops of, you know, there's still a few Woolworths here and there.
[14:44.920 --> 14:45.260]  Are there?
[14:45.480 --> 14:47.920]  Yeah, but they're like, you know, they were individual businesses.
[14:47.920 --> 14:51.560]  There's still a Radio Shack that was owned by that franchisee.
[14:51.580 --> 14:52.820]  There's still Blockbuster Video in Alaska.
[14:53.100 --> 14:53.540]  Exactly.
[14:53.660 --> 14:54.900]  These one-of-a-kinds.
[14:54.980 --> 14:58.720]  But to say that means that the company lives on, no.
[14:58.880 --> 15:00.740]  There's power records in Japan.
[15:00.880 --> 15:01.240]  In Japan.
[15:01.280 --> 15:01.520]  Yeah.
[15:02.100 --> 15:05.280]  And so, you know, these things live in weird ways.
[15:05.300 --> 15:06.480]  And somewhere there's a Wetsons.
[15:06.620 --> 15:07.060]  I know it.
[15:07.900 --> 15:08.340]  Somewhere.
[15:08.340 --> 15:13.360]  Yeah, I mean, so this record of Kmart's announcements we have on there.
[15:13.680 --> 15:14.160]  Who?
[15:14.340 --> 15:18.260]  Okay, how would you keep announcements from Kmart?
[15:18.540 --> 15:23.020]  This is basically saying a shopper's in aisle two, there's a spillage, that kind of thing?
[15:23.140 --> 15:24.460]  It wasn't an air check.
[15:24.620 --> 15:25.420]  You're thinking like radio.
[15:25.660 --> 15:34.040]  It would be that once a week, they would say, here is the tape you're going to play on repeat from May 5th to May 12th in 1992.
[15:34.900 --> 15:37.700]  And they would pop it into a tape machine and let it run.
[15:37.700 --> 15:38.660]  Oh, this is music.
[15:38.900 --> 15:39.980]  Music and announcements.
[15:40.300 --> 15:40.760]  Yeah, like...
[15:40.760 --> 15:42.040]  But they were generalized announcements.
[15:42.040 --> 15:44.620]  Like, did you know the pharmacy could take your prescription?
[15:44.860 --> 15:45.280]  Exactly.
[15:45.400 --> 15:46.480]  Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
[15:46.480 --> 15:46.860]  Wow.
[15:47.180 --> 15:48.220]  I want a copy of this.
[15:48.360 --> 15:49.540]  And we put that up there.
[15:49.740 --> 15:57.660]  And then older Kmart employees started contacting the guy who did this and said, you know, I have reel-to-reels in my garage.
[15:57.660 --> 15:58.440]  Do you want them?
[15:58.520 --> 16:00.880]  So that's how we have Kmart recordings from 1972.
[16:01.740 --> 16:04.440]  When they're just talking about like getting credit cards and things.
[16:04.700 --> 16:04.820]  Wow.
[16:05.500 --> 16:10.300]  So you must get all kinds of people contacting you with these weird collections of reel-to-reel tape.
[16:10.440 --> 16:17.200]  My thing, by the way, Bob and Ray tapes, anybody has those, please contact either Jason or myself because the archive, this isn't good enough.
[16:17.200 --> 16:18.560]  I want so much more.
[16:18.860 --> 16:26.980]  But you must get all kinds of people contacting you with things that everybody else thinks is a big waste of time and space and you see the value in.
[16:26.980 --> 16:27.440]  Sure.
[16:27.620 --> 16:38.540]  I mean, there's a lot, you know, of course, there's ones where people can overwhelm us, but there's a lot of cases where somebody has just a small amount of media and they're like, does anyone have this?
[16:38.640 --> 16:47.080]  And it won't surprise you to hear that a lot of people think they have something rare that turns out to be what people were...
[16:47.080 --> 16:57.380]  Like the example I give is, you know, we get offered a lot of books that were really popular and Walden books and like, you know, and malls from like the 70s and the 80s.
[16:57.480 --> 16:59.040]  And they'll say like, I have the weirdest book.
[16:59.040 --> 16:59.660]  It's this book.
[16:59.740 --> 17:07.740]  And it's like, yeah, that's the quote unquote weird book that they officially sold through Harper Collins from 1972 to 73 in the humor section.
[17:07.740 --> 17:08.880]  That's why it's so weird.
[17:09.120 --> 17:15.620]  But there's a lot of times where people will offer me something and I'm like, yeah, I don't think that exists anywhere else.
[17:15.920 --> 17:16.180]  Wow.
[17:16.240 --> 17:20.240]  And I think we'll just put it up and see if we can help you with it.
[17:20.400 --> 17:27.100]  So I'm always, I mean, we can say that now, you know, Jason at textfiles.com.
[17:27.260 --> 17:28.800]  I don't care who knows my email address.
[17:28.960 --> 17:29.960]  Everyone knows your email address.
[17:30.180 --> 17:31.220]  Give me a ring.
[17:31.220 --> 17:32.340]  We'll have a little talk.
[17:32.480 --> 17:35.120]  I might take a little time to get back to you, but I do get back to you.
[17:35.120 --> 17:37.780]  And people will say, what about this?
[17:37.900 --> 17:38.480]  What about this?
[17:38.620 --> 17:39.160]  What about this?
[17:39.220 --> 17:41.240]  And I will say, oh yeah.
[17:41.500 --> 17:41.700]  Yeah.
[17:41.740 --> 17:43.180]  Send that along and we'll get to it.
[17:43.220 --> 17:47.640]  And what you do at Internet Archive is so invaluable to so many of us.
[17:47.700 --> 17:50.800]  And of course, you know, Internet Archive runs the Wayback Machine.
[17:51.240 --> 17:52.160]  That's the big thing.
[17:52.360 --> 17:53.660]  Which has saved our asses many times.
[17:53.740 --> 17:58.440]  We have to look at our own website sometimes and say, well, how did we do this a few years ago?
[17:58.440 --> 18:00.020]  Because we don't have any record of it somehow.
[18:00.420 --> 18:01.340]  And there it is.
[18:01.440 --> 18:03.880]  We're able to actually see, oh yeah, this is how it played out.
[18:03.880 --> 18:04.080]  But...
[18:04.080 --> 18:07.000]  Yeah, we're grabbing billions of URLs a day, I believe.
[18:07.180 --> 18:07.800]  That's our current...
[18:07.800 --> 18:08.240]  Billions.
[18:08.440 --> 18:08.920]  Billions.
[18:09.600 --> 18:18.260]  If we have something up there, we re-grab it at least once every six months and probably more if it's a news site or it's other pieces like that.
[18:18.380 --> 18:22.720]  I don't do any engineering with the Wayback, but I've been pleasantly surprised.
[18:22.720 --> 18:26.820]  Well, we're always fascinated, I think, to hear how it's used in fact checking.
[18:27.020 --> 18:33.060]  I think recently it's been behind a lot of that, even though it doesn't get as much credit, I think, as it deserves.
[18:33.060 --> 18:41.720]  But people use it very frequently to look at stuff that's been taken down, which occurred a lot in the last couple of years from government sites, I believe.
[18:41.720 --> 18:42.020]  Yeah.
[18:42.160 --> 18:46.180]  But it's been really kind of cool to kind of know that that's there.
[18:46.820 --> 18:52.820]  Whether it's the primary source for people to do that kind of work, I don't know necessarily, but it's a good thing there.
[18:52.840 --> 18:55.120]  I don't like when things are taken down for whatever reason.
[18:55.120 --> 19:02.140]  If a news story is written and it has a glaring error in it, that news story should remain as a testament of the glaring error.
[19:02.340 --> 19:04.940]  You can't just rewrite it and say, oh, that never happened.
[19:05.040 --> 19:07.980]  If you tweet something that's stupid, that should remain too.
[19:07.980 --> 19:10.720]  You know, you shouldn't be able to just delete it and say, oh, I never said that.
[19:10.900 --> 19:19.120]  I just think that, you know, with the Snapchat era, we kind of revise what we say a lot and the history is lost.
[19:19.280 --> 19:21.180]  Yeah, it becomes more PR than news, right?
[19:21.540 --> 19:21.720]  Yeah.
[19:21.960 --> 19:30.200]  I mean, certainly there's a lot of cases of these, you know, news organizations that are consolidating and in doing so they're destroying their archives.
[19:30.440 --> 19:37.660]  And as some of them become more and more online, I mean, we certainly look at how news has changed over the past.
[19:38.300 --> 19:42.360]  We used to have it that we said, wow, news is not getting very good.
[19:42.480 --> 19:48.480]  I remember that in the eighties in college that they were like, yeah, so news isn't very good as it used to be.
[19:49.100 --> 19:58.520]  Bearing in mind, of course, if you look at the credit or the history, like it was only like a 30 or 40 year golden period, like that it was like, wow, TV news is actually pretty good.
[19:58.680 --> 20:00.020]  And then it started to fade.
[20:00.020 --> 20:03.900]  And then it turned out that like consolidation and everything else.
[20:04.020 --> 20:08.000]  And now the tail end of that is that archives are disappearing.
[20:08.700 --> 20:09.900]  Recordings are disappearing.
[20:10.640 --> 20:13.500]  Reporters are discovering that their work is disappearing.
[20:13.760 --> 20:22.960]  And there's been several efforts by people to create nonprofits to focus on news because news is a very specific problem.
[20:23.040 --> 20:24.620]  And I hope they help.
[20:24.620 --> 20:29.220]  I mean, I'm different, you know, I'm not, I don't own the archive.
[20:29.220 --> 20:32.460]  I'm not the person who funds it.
[20:32.620 --> 20:35.940]  But that's Brewster Kale, who's an internet saint.
[20:36.180 --> 20:41.660]  But I believe it doesn't hurt to have other archives at all.
[20:41.680 --> 20:43.800]  I think that it's a very good idea.
[20:44.860 --> 20:47.300]  Having a dominant position is fun.
[20:47.440 --> 20:48.340]  It's great.
[20:48.500 --> 20:50.880]  It's great that we're the first place people think of.
[20:50.880 --> 21:00.800]  But sometimes people will give us an enormous amount of unfunded mandates that we don't, you know, hey, archive.org slash donate.
[21:00.980 --> 21:03.760]  Give us, you know, keep what we have up and spinning.
[21:03.940 --> 21:07.300]  But, but then people will say like, well, of course you grabbed all of this.
[21:07.400 --> 21:09.800]  And it'll be like, well, nobody could grab all of that.
[21:09.920 --> 21:13.580]  Like people keep waiting for us to quote unquote, back up Facebook.
[21:14.320 --> 21:18.460]  And I'm like, well, I know Facebook generates a petabyte of data a day.
[21:19.000 --> 21:20.620]  That was the number I used to have.
[21:20.700 --> 21:21.640]  I wonder if it's out of date.
[21:21.900 --> 21:26.260]  I know that like YouTube is generating something crazy.
[21:26.460 --> 21:31.240]  It's like, like three or four weeks a second of video, you know.
[21:31.380 --> 21:37.820]  And it's just this incredible sinkhole of all of human culture.
[21:38.040 --> 21:40.200]  Like video visual culture is now on YouTube.
[21:40.200 --> 21:41.460]  We go through YouTube.
[21:41.760 --> 21:41.920]  We go through YouTube.
[21:41.920 --> 21:50.720]  Other, you know, groups of mine go through YouTube because, yeah, it would be nice if somebody donated this incredible whatever they're digitizing, but all they know is YouTube.
[21:51.040 --> 21:56.800]  And so we just go to it and grab a copy because we're like, oh, that's where they thought to grab it.
[21:56.840 --> 22:02.620]  That's where I grabbed a full grabbing of vegetable soup, which may or may not be in your memory.
[22:02.620 --> 22:07.540]  It was a diversity educational program of the 70s.
[22:07.700 --> 22:08.120]  Okay.
[22:08.120 --> 22:11.180]  And if you remember it, it was really weird.
[22:11.340 --> 22:20.520]  Enough that as an older adult, when people see vegetable soup and look at the animated stuff, they go, I thought this was a nightmare that I had.
[22:20.740 --> 22:22.100]  Like they really do.
[22:22.360 --> 22:26.320]  And somebody beautifully restored and put it all up.
[22:26.320 --> 22:27.100]  It's been gone.
[22:27.120 --> 22:29.560]  It's disappeared and grabbed a copy.
[22:29.760 --> 22:37.080]  So YouTube has this aspect, but we're depending on Google to be our library of video.
[22:37.440 --> 22:39.040]  I don't know if that's go great either.
[22:39.220 --> 22:43.900]  So I'd love to see more archives of news that are independent of any news organization.
[22:43.900 --> 22:51.260]  Every day should have at least one newscast saved somewhere so you can go back and see how something was reported at the time.
[22:51.340 --> 22:55.060]  Without corrections, without addendums, how it was reported at the time.
[22:55.060 --> 22:57.040]  Same thing with any TV program that airs.
[22:57.160 --> 23:03.900]  There are warehouses in Jersey and other places filled with videotapes that are untouched.
[23:04.280 --> 23:10.780]  And because somebody hasn't paid for the rights, they will deteriorate in those warehouses, surely because of greed.
[23:11.220 --> 23:11.400]  Sure.
[23:11.480 --> 23:15.180]  These things should be accessible by everybody that is interested in seeing them.
[23:15.300 --> 23:18.160]  The old episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati, remember that show?
[23:18.260 --> 23:18.840]  That they modified.
[23:19.100 --> 23:22.740]  They modified them because somebody didn't pay for the rights for the music.
[23:22.740 --> 23:26.280]  It was a radio station that played music, so it was very important to the story.
[23:26.500 --> 23:29.400]  They changed it in syndication, so it was terrible.
[23:29.860 --> 23:33.520]  I happen to have old recordings of that show, and I've digitized that.
[23:33.940 --> 23:35.220]  But other people do as well.
[23:35.220 --> 23:36.060]  They have better copies.
[23:36.220 --> 23:38.120]  Well, I got better than that for you because you're in one of them.
[23:38.160 --> 23:44.200]  One of the Grand Theft Auto games just changed its soundtrack because their radio station license ran out.
[23:44.200 --> 23:47.120]  Like, the licensing of the music on that station.
[23:47.260 --> 23:47.300]  Yeah.
[23:47.300 --> 23:49.160]  So they closed that station, quote unquote, down.
[23:49.300 --> 23:50.000]  The one that I'm on.
[23:50.100 --> 23:53.160]  I think... I don't know the one you're on, but one of them has been closed down.
[23:53.360 --> 23:53.440]  Wow.
[23:53.440 --> 23:54.480]  So there you go.
[23:54.480 --> 23:56.200]  You've been virtually shut down there.
[23:56.400 --> 23:57.420]  Ah, it's not the first time.
[23:57.620 --> 23:57.980]  Exactly.
[23:58.440 --> 24:02.000]  Now, the Archive, by the way, does have archive.org slash TV.
[24:02.040 --> 24:10.500]  And you can go search news captions for all news programs since 2009 that we were able to download off satellite.
[24:10.500 --> 24:12.560]  And people use that all the time.
[24:12.920 --> 24:16.440]  Okay, but I want to go back to the 50s and the 40s and see what people were doing.
[24:16.580 --> 24:20.260]  And I know there are tapes or there's recordings of these things in existence.
[24:20.560 --> 24:20.740]  Yep.
[24:21.620 --> 24:25.720]  People just have to come together and make sure that it's preserved.
[24:25.900 --> 24:32.100]  If somebody has something that they think might be interesting to you, your email address is what they should use?
[24:32.100 --> 24:34.000]  Yeah, Jason at textfiles.com.
[24:34.100 --> 24:38.260]  I may not be able to take what you have, but I may be able to connect you with people who take it.
[24:38.260 --> 24:44.180]  But I'm, you know, when you're inside a business or a world, you think, well, everyone understands.
[24:44.360 --> 24:48.220]  And I understand that there are people out there who have something that they're sitting on.
[24:48.380 --> 24:50.960]  And they say, I wouldn't even know where to start.
[24:51.140 --> 24:55.840]  And so I do my best every day to like say, okay, well, here's some names.
[24:56.020 --> 24:59.060]  Never throw out reel-to-reel tapes if you have any.
[24:59.140 --> 25:00.220]  Never throw out vinyl.
[25:00.580 --> 25:02.160]  Never throw out a rotary telephone.
[25:02.160 --> 25:04.600]  All of these rules that I think people should live by.
[25:05.180 --> 25:12.320]  And if you have these items, contact one of us and we'll figure out a way to preserve it because they are definitely worth preserving.
[25:12.540 --> 25:12.980]  Alex.
[25:13.100 --> 25:25.800]  So the flip side of this, since we've been talking primarily about volunteering information, giving over information, archiving, important messages, websites, all different types of data.
[25:26.760 --> 25:29.200]  Where does consent come into this, if at all?
[25:29.300 --> 25:34.780]  Because what if I say to you, the Internet Archive, this old version of my particular website?
[25:35.460 --> 25:37.440]  You know, it's a disaster.
[25:37.820 --> 25:38.760]  It had typos on it.
[25:38.860 --> 25:43.700]  It's extremely embarrassing for me to have this old version of my website archived in the Wayback Machine.
[25:43.740 --> 25:45.400]  Can you please remove it?
[25:45.660 --> 25:46.620]  Will you remove it?
[25:46.620 --> 25:50.760]  To the best of my knowledge, we will make it inaccessible at your request.
[25:51.080 --> 25:51.420]  Okay.
[25:51.620 --> 25:59.220]  So people have contacted us and said, you know, could you, you know, take this away and we'll make it inaccessible to the public.
[25:59.300 --> 26:02.360]  Is that a courtesy or is that because of a legal reason?
[26:02.560 --> 26:09.820]  I think I don't know the full reason and I'm not really either entitled or really qualified about the law on it.
[26:09.820 --> 26:16.820]  It's more a case of I think we're trying to be a good citizen and not make it, you know, the whole thing.
[26:17.040 --> 26:18.320]  This is what's so strange.
[26:18.340 --> 26:19.640]  It's just a whim.
[26:20.080 --> 26:28.200]  It was just that, you know, my boss had a business that was called Alexa Internet way back when that was purchased by Amazon eventually.
[26:28.200 --> 26:31.920]  And all it was, was Nielsen ratings for the web.
[26:32.060 --> 26:34.160]  So you would say, oh, here's the rating.
[26:34.360 --> 26:37.840]  Your website is number 4,500 out of the web or whatever.
[26:37.900 --> 26:39.140]  And here's what you tend to use.
[26:39.320 --> 26:44.820]  And the side effect of that is they would capture the site for comparison and analysis for their graphs.
[26:44.820 --> 26:51.760]  And so when he sold the company, he said, you know, we have all these captures of websites since 1996.
[26:52.480 --> 26:56.700]  Wouldn't it be neat if you could look through it like an old family album?
[26:56.880 --> 26:59.400]  Like that was literally the depth of his thinking at the time.
[26:59.580 --> 27:01.840]  And so that's why we're here.
[27:02.200 --> 27:03.740]  Like, that's it.
[27:04.140 --> 27:08.220]  And nobody thought that was a good idea, right?
[27:08.220 --> 27:14.940]  I mean, not to send us down an insane crazy hole, but you know, like Brewster was really big into Bitcoin in the beginning.
[27:15.380 --> 27:19.700]  Not because of one thing or another, but just because he was like, oh, neat.
[27:20.080 --> 27:24.100]  Like 99% of what we do there is like, oh, neat.
[27:24.200 --> 27:24.360]  Yep.
[27:24.500 --> 27:25.460]  What if we do this?
[27:25.620 --> 27:26.500]  What will that do?
[27:26.680 --> 27:28.040]  Oh, is nobody saving that?
[27:28.440 --> 27:29.340]  Let's do that.
[27:29.520 --> 27:36.900]  And then 20, 30 years later, we have entire institutions and comparisons and people say, well, did you think that this would be this?
[27:36.900 --> 27:38.560]  And we're like, nobody was doing this.
[27:38.760 --> 27:38.860]  Mm-hmm.
[27:39.120 --> 27:49.620]  And so as we're now kind of like one of the archives, people will say, well, what's your game plan with like the, you know, people's stuff?
[27:49.780 --> 27:52.000]  And where's your position?
[27:52.000 --> 27:52.920]  And what about this?
[27:52.960 --> 27:59.840]  And it's like, as far as I can tell, we're just trying to make it that people can reach old things.
[27:59.840 --> 28:19.940]  And along the way, we ended up becoming one of the internet's indispensable utilities to the point that a non-significant number of people think we're either one owned by Google, which we are not, or that we're a government institution, which we definitely are not,
[28:20.400 --> 28:20.560]  right?
[28:20.560 --> 28:22.320]  We're a private nonprofit.
[28:22.820 --> 28:23.900]  And we have been.
[28:24.040 --> 28:26.280]  And we're a registered library in California.
[28:27.080 --> 28:28.680]  And that's what we are.
[28:28.940 --> 28:30.600]  And it just turns out to be cool.
[28:30.840 --> 28:32.180]  That brings up a really interesting question.
[28:32.320 --> 28:32.480]  Sure.
[28:33.240 --> 28:35.360]  Do you archive .gov sites or .mil sites?
[28:35.560 --> 28:37.440]  We archive .gov and .mil.
[28:38.200 --> 28:42.120]  And as of some time ago, we stopped paying attention to robots.txt on it.
[28:42.340 --> 28:43.480]  Like we just grabbed them completely.
[28:43.480 --> 28:43.820]  Nice.
[28:44.100 --> 28:47.620]  But that's under the theory of these are public institutions.
[28:47.840 --> 28:50.240]  And robots.txt doesn't make any sense in that.
[28:50.700 --> 28:51.720]  It's in the public interest.
[28:51.940 --> 28:52.740]  It's in the public interest.
[28:52.780 --> 28:54.800]  But that's a decision that we've made.
[28:54.980 --> 29:02.420]  But we're not, you know, we just uncovered this crazy exception that's in the Sonny Bono Copyright Act.
[29:02.480 --> 29:03.600]  I don't know if you know about this one.
[29:03.700 --> 29:04.260]  I've heard it.
[29:04.260 --> 29:18.140]  It's the weird one where if the book is between 1923 and 1939 currently, and it's proven to not be commercially available, you can reproduce it in a library.
[29:19.340 --> 29:23.540]  It was carved in there as a way to make librarians feel better.
[29:23.540 --> 29:29.300]  And then as this scholar who found it, nobody's ever used it.
[29:29.340 --> 29:32.380]  Because you need a place that has the resources to do it.
[29:32.680 --> 29:36.000]  And be crazy enough to do it.
[29:36.080 --> 29:38.640]  Which libraries are not traditionally really crazy.
[29:38.860 --> 29:39.720]  So we're crazy.
[29:39.900 --> 29:46.280]  So we have a collection called the Sonny Bono Memorial Collection.
[29:46.280 --> 29:47.980]  And it's these books.
[29:48.260 --> 29:50.160]  It's a few dozen books, I think, right now.
[29:50.300 --> 29:50.760]  And it'll grow.
[29:50.980 --> 29:55.240]  Of books that are just up there to read because they fall under this weird exception.
[29:55.680 --> 29:57.040]  But, like, those kinds...
[29:57.040 --> 29:58.580]  Like, it's just a weird...
[29:58.580 --> 29:59.100]  It's...
[29:59.100 --> 29:59.800]  You know this.
[29:59.820 --> 30:01.360]  It's a crazy, weird world.
[30:01.460 --> 30:02.320]  And we're in it.
[30:02.620 --> 30:03.860]  We certainly are.
[30:03.960 --> 30:04.280]  We are.
[30:04.400 --> 30:06.600]  And we're also in the middle of a fundraiser, by the way.
[30:06.660 --> 30:07.900]  And I should point this out.
[30:08.020 --> 30:17.440]  Since we're talking about archives and history and things like that, there's a particular item that we are focusing on, this fun drive.
[30:17.820 --> 30:19.360]  It's our Hacker Digest.
[30:19.500 --> 30:24.020]  And what that is, is a compilation of every year of 2600 Magazine from the beginning.
[30:24.160 --> 30:25.460]  1984 is when we started.
[30:25.660 --> 30:26.820]  And we saved everything.
[30:26.820 --> 30:27.840]  We saved it all.
[30:28.180 --> 30:30.780]  And we have reprinted it digitally.
[30:31.360 --> 30:32.780]  Everything has been...
[30:32.780 --> 30:34.080]  Or is being encoded.
[30:34.240 --> 30:36.100]  It's a continuing project.
[30:36.720 --> 30:41.100]  And what we are offering for a pledge of $100 is the entire thing.
[30:41.100 --> 30:44.120]  From 1984 into the future, however long that goes.
[30:44.360 --> 30:48.260]  Digital collection of every issue of 2600 Magazine, the Hacker Quarterly.
[30:48.820 --> 30:53.180]  We have basically been defined as the definitive voice of the hacker scene.
[30:53.500 --> 31:01.300]  The collection contains every issue, including those that are out of print, digital, non-DRM, PDF format, organized by year.
[31:01.300 --> 31:18.900]  So, if you pledge $100 to 516-620-3602 or give to WBAI.org, then you will receive, in email, links or attachments for each year of the Hacker Digest.
[31:18.940 --> 31:20.400]  We only have three of these left in stock.
[31:20.400 --> 31:21.360]  They've been very popular.
[31:22.300 --> 31:25.000]  And we've run out of just about everything else that we've been offering.
[31:25.000 --> 31:27.240]  So, this is something that is left.
[31:27.320 --> 31:31.140]  And a pledge of $100 will get you a lifetime of this.
[31:31.320 --> 31:33.520]  Our lifetime of yours, not sure which will come first.
[31:33.980 --> 31:40.940]  But there are already 34 years of this digest, editions of this digest that are out.
[31:41.040 --> 31:48.160]  And it's fascinating, Jason, just going through those old magazines and seeing the history that unfolded every single year.
[31:48.160 --> 31:50.280]  Seeing how technology developed.
[31:50.540 --> 31:54.520]  How privacy has been attacked since day one.
[31:54.520 --> 32:01.280]  How the NSA was there to threaten all kinds of privacy issues.
[32:01.680 --> 32:03.440]  Consumer issues.
[32:03.840 --> 32:06.180]  The changing of technology.
[32:06.520 --> 32:11.180]  Improving disk space and speed and all of that.
[32:11.600 --> 32:18.080]  And just seeing the tone, which has pretty much maintained itself throughout the years, throughout the decades of the hacker community.
[32:18.160 --> 32:19.560]  Basically questioning things.
[32:19.740 --> 32:22.620]  Trying to think of a better way of doing things.
[32:23.600 --> 32:25.760]  And just continuing.
[32:25.980 --> 32:28.680]  Continuing to do what we do just because we feel like doing it.
[32:28.720 --> 32:33.040]  And I see a very good parallel with what you guys do at Internet Archive.
[32:33.460 --> 32:35.420]  And I see that throughout the hacker community.
[32:35.620 --> 32:40.540]  So, if you're interested in that, interested in what we're talking about, this is a good way to support the radio station.
[32:40.540 --> 32:42.680]  Get something really cool in exchange.
[32:44.360 --> 32:46.320]  And continue this conversation.
[32:46.960 --> 32:49.520]  516-620-3602 is our phone number.
[32:49.680 --> 32:52.460]  Again, the website give2wbai.org.
[32:52.580 --> 32:53.300]  That's the number 2.
[32:53.960 --> 32:54.920]  Give2wbai.org.
[32:55.360 --> 32:58.960]  And a $100 pledge will get you the Hacker Digest lifetime subscription.
[32:58.980 --> 33:00.320]  We have other premiums as well.
[33:00.380 --> 33:03.080]  You can ask the people who pick up the phone what else is available.
[33:03.080 --> 33:05.020]  Or you can go online and see for yourself.
[33:05.020 --> 33:07.680]  Yeah, it's wbai.org.
[33:07.680 --> 33:11.560]  There's a lot of links there on ways you can become a member.
[33:12.220 --> 33:18.900]  Specifically, I wanted to remind people about the automatic payments that you can set up through the WBAI Buddy program.
[33:19.060 --> 33:20.040]  Just want to mention that.
[33:20.260 --> 33:28.720]  Also, if SMS is better for you, text WBAI to this short number 41444.
[33:29.120 --> 33:31.860]  And you'll get a response and I'll tell you everything that you need to do.
[33:31.860 --> 33:36.580]  And speaking of the BAI Buddy, that's where you pledge a certain amount every month.
[33:36.700 --> 33:37.400]  It can be like $5.
[33:37.400 --> 33:38.180]  It can be $10.
[33:38.600 --> 33:39.660]  It can be $50.
[33:39.880 --> 33:41.800]  Whatever you feel like giving per month.
[33:42.420 --> 33:43.820]  We have been getting a bunch of those.
[33:43.860 --> 33:48.580]  And I want to thank people who have pledged to off the hook using that program.
[33:48.580 --> 33:56.460]  And we're told by management that if we get enough of these, if it continues along this path, we can reduce the amount of fundraisers.
[33:56.580 --> 33:56.880]  Get this.
[33:56.960 --> 34:00.040]  The amount of fundraisers on this radio station to one per year.
[34:00.220 --> 34:01.160]  Can you imagine that?
[34:01.160 --> 34:03.080]  Currently, I think we have five per year.
[34:03.740 --> 34:05.960]  This is a model that works.
[34:06.240 --> 34:11.380]  When I visited our friends in Italy, we saw a community radio station there where people pledge a certain amount.
[34:11.540 --> 34:14.420]  Usually, it's 100 euros or above.
[34:15.460 --> 34:17.540]  And that happens every year.
[34:17.540 --> 34:19.040]  And that funds the station.
[34:19.160 --> 34:24.660]  They don't have to go on the air and ask for money constantly because people pay each year a certain minimum amount.
[34:25.040 --> 34:29.940]  And they are able to maintain an amazing studio, a staff of people.
[34:30.300 --> 34:33.280]  And it's basically very rock solid.
[34:33.460 --> 34:34.800]  That's the kind of thing we're pushing for.
[34:34.860 --> 34:35.740]  And I think we're getting closer.
[34:36.340 --> 34:38.560]  I mean, I think you make a really good point there.
[34:38.660 --> 34:41.680]  But that's based on having the structure in place.
[34:41.820 --> 34:44.880]  And now we have the structure in place with the WBAI buddy system.
[34:44.900 --> 34:47.960]  And so we can reap the rewards of having put the structure in place.
[34:48.980 --> 34:52.720]  You know, reducing the amount of fundraisers would be so fantastic.
[34:53.400 --> 34:55.860]  That's sort of a situation where everybody wins.
[34:56.400 --> 34:57.440]  Yeah, big thank you to everybody.
[34:57.820 --> 35:05.460]  Just so you know, we can tell when the station gets a new buddy during our show, they let us know.
[35:05.720 --> 35:07.340]  So a big thank you for that.
[35:07.560 --> 35:09.780]  It's a great way to set yourself up.
[35:09.880 --> 35:10.840]  It takes a little bit of foresight.
[35:10.960 --> 35:20.380]  But if you really, if you kind of think about the math and how much it helps us as far as planning for this kind of fundraising, it really does make sense.
[35:20.380 --> 35:22.620]  So thanks again, everybody who's signed up for the buddy.
[35:23.080 --> 35:29.280]  And you know, WBAI has been through so much over the years, but we always emerge one way or another.
[35:29.400 --> 35:31.520]  And I think this is not going to be any exception.
[35:32.320 --> 35:34.880]  If we support the place, it will remain here.
[35:34.980 --> 35:35.580]  It will be strong.
[35:35.760 --> 35:47.040]  And you know, the kind of conversation we're having with Jason right now, that's the kind of thing I want to be able to do without worrying about this, without worrying about having to ask for listener support, because I want the listener support to be steady,
[35:47.140 --> 35:54.080]  to be something that's always there, that will remain there as long as we do a good job presenting radio to you.
[35:54.260 --> 35:56.300]  That's what we are committed to.
[35:56.460 --> 36:00.500]  And what we ask is that you contribute in some way.
[36:00.660 --> 36:01.280]  Keep us going.
[36:01.480 --> 36:04.840]  Again, the number is 516-620-3602.
[36:05.000 --> 36:07.420]  The website give to WBAI.org.
[36:07.800 --> 36:11.120]  And show your support however you can.
[36:11.120 --> 36:16.280]  Yeah, and that goes a long way for our ability to do programming the way we want to do.
[36:16.460 --> 36:20.580]  You know, we spend less time on some of the operational stuff.
[36:20.840 --> 36:26.180]  You know, just managing that is quite a big effort for a community station like this.
[36:26.520 --> 36:40.420]  So, yeah, if you want to support us in increasing the production value and the variety of topics we can cover when we're planning our shows, donating is a great way.
[36:40.420 --> 36:41.140]  Absolutely.
[36:41.500 --> 36:46.300]  And also, for those of you who have donated in the past, we have your info.
[36:47.080 --> 36:55.460]  We've gotten the info from the radio station, and we are fulfilling all the premiums from as far back as autumn and winter.
[36:55.980 --> 36:58.280]  So, if you've pledged in the past, do not worry.
[36:58.340 --> 37:00.920]  You will be getting those premiums.
[37:00.960 --> 37:03.340]  We also have Hope Conference keynote series.
[37:03.460 --> 37:05.560]  We're out of the flash drive, but we do have DVDs.
[37:05.560 --> 37:10.400]  So, if you still use DVDs, and Jason, I know people still use DVDs, right?
[37:10.560 --> 37:11.040]  A number.
[37:11.300 --> 37:11.760]  A few do.
[37:12.280 --> 37:23.560]  You can get all of the Hope Conference keynotes from 1994, our first conference, until 2016, our most recent conference, the 11th Hope.
[37:23.560 --> 37:29.760]  And you'll have everybody, Edward Snowden, Steve Wozniak, Corey Docterl, Kevin Mitnick, Jello Biaffer, so many more.
[37:30.280 --> 37:36.400]  Every single video of every single keynote address that has been given at the Hope Conference.
[37:36.560 --> 37:37.980]  That's for a pledge of $75.
[37:38.640 --> 37:40.860]  516-620-3602.
[37:40.860 --> 37:46.220]  Again, only available on DVD right now, because we are out of the flash drives, and a pledge of $75.
[37:46.520 --> 37:47.440]  But there are other premiums, too.
[37:47.540 --> 37:53.080]  You can go online and see a list of them, or you can talk to the person at 516-620-3602 and ask them.
[37:53.800 --> 37:59.520]  All right, getting back to our special guest, Jason Scott, from archive.org, the Internet Archive.
[37:59.860 --> 38:00.740]  Textfiles.com?
[38:00.880 --> 38:01.540]  Is that still...?
[38:01.540 --> 38:03.680]  Textfiles.com, still alive and kicking.
[38:04.020 --> 38:04.980]  Tell us about that project.
[38:05.460 --> 38:07.160]  Celebrating 20 years in October.
[38:07.400 --> 38:07.720]  Wow.
[38:07.780 --> 38:08.660]  We're all ancient.
[38:09.080 --> 38:09.480]  Interesting.
[38:09.480 --> 38:24.180]  I started that as a, wow, BBSs were very cool, and computers were cool in the 80s in 1998, and now I have people contact me who are in college in engineering because they found textfiles.com as they were teenagers.
[38:24.580 --> 38:30.120]  And I'm like, okay, now I'm the old crone institution.
[38:30.440 --> 38:34.800]  Well, textfiles.com was cool when it was saying that BBSs were cool back in the 1980s.
[38:34.900 --> 38:35.200]  Right.
[38:35.200 --> 38:36.120]  So...
[38:36.120 --> 38:42.040]  And it's pretty complete in many ways of like the major BBS text files of that time.
[38:42.200 --> 38:42.260]  Uh-huh.
[38:42.260 --> 38:45.240]  And people derive differing value from it.
[38:45.380 --> 38:45.700]  And I...
[38:45.700 --> 38:46.860]  It's weirder...
[38:47.500 --> 38:56.340]  The thing that I get now that tells me that I'm in the future is I get contacted by kids who ask for permission for the whole archive so they can do machine learning against it.
[38:56.340 --> 39:00.960]  Do you get contacted by TV producers that want to have some history that's genuine?
[39:01.600 --> 39:02.160]  No.
[39:02.580 --> 39:03.660]  I wish...
[39:03.660 --> 39:06.660]  I would love to help make some of these vaguely more accurate.
[39:06.740 --> 39:11.440]  I do have cases where there's a comic book artist I've been helping.
[39:11.660 --> 39:11.840]  Okay.
[39:11.840 --> 39:11.900]  Yeah.
[39:12.660 --> 39:20.920]  He has something called Incredible Doom and he's been making this comic that takes place in a BBS era of like 90, 91.
[39:21.460 --> 39:23.840]  So he'll say to me, how would...
[39:24.400 --> 39:29.020]  What kind of computer would the kids have like in their BBS?
[39:29.220 --> 39:32.640]  And I'll be like, well, how about an Amiga with this connected to it?
[39:32.680 --> 39:33.340]  Here's some pictures.
[39:33.340 --> 39:39.140]  And recently he said to me, how would they figure out where the BBS was physically located?
[39:39.300 --> 39:43.400]  And I'm like, well, at that time you might use a phone book or maybe have a reverse...
[39:43.400 --> 39:44.200]  A Kohl's directory.
[39:44.520 --> 39:44.780]  Right.
[39:45.020 --> 39:45.360]  Or...
[39:45.360 --> 39:46.680]  Go to the library and use a Kohl's directory.
[39:46.920 --> 39:47.080]  Right.
[39:47.160 --> 39:58.780]  My suggestion to him was actually to use... was to have him go to a local music shop where they would possibly put this BBS up because it was like a punk BBS.
[39:58.780 --> 40:03.640]  And I said, one of the things that's really lost is that physical aspect.
[40:03.940 --> 40:06.280]  Like now if you can't find it on your phone, it's gone.
[40:06.600 --> 40:15.920]  But in like 1990, you would walk down to the store and find out what was going on or where things were and walk to the library.
[40:15.920 --> 40:18.340]  And that's gone, so put it in there.
[40:18.440 --> 40:23.620]  So being a weird historical consultant for a comic book appears to be my future.
[40:24.640 --> 40:25.660]  It's funny you say that.
[40:25.660 --> 40:31.360]  You know, my local music shop back in Long Island actually used to run a BBS as well.
[40:31.580 --> 40:31.600]  Yeah.
[40:31.600 --> 40:31.960]  A lot of them did.
[40:31.960 --> 40:33.360]  It was the Middle Earth BBS.
[40:33.480 --> 40:34.640]  It was pretty awesome.
[40:34.920 --> 40:38.240]  It was a little weird in some corners of the BBS as well.
[40:38.280 --> 40:39.800]  But that was what BBSs were for.
[40:40.220 --> 40:41.960]  But I wanted to ask you, this is textfiles.com.
[40:42.040 --> 40:43.880]  You must have all the old issues of Phrack.
[40:44.080 --> 40:44.400]  Sure.
[40:44.440 --> 40:47.180]  You know, even things like the Anarchist Cookbook.
[40:47.320 --> 40:48.600]  Remember that was a big popular...
[40:48.600 --> 40:50.360]  All sorts of versions of the Anarchist Cookbook.
[40:50.440 --> 40:50.740]  All sorts of...
[40:50.740 --> 40:52.160]  Those are around in other places though, aren't they?
[40:52.180 --> 40:53.840]  Phrack.org has all the Phrack issues.
[40:53.900 --> 40:54.380]  Is that right?
[40:54.380 --> 40:55.600]  Anarchist Cookbook is everywhere.
[40:56.120 --> 40:56.980]  Well, you would know.
[40:57.360 --> 40:58.280]  Well, yeah, yeah.
[40:58.380 --> 40:58.640]  I mean...
[40:58.640 --> 40:59.280]  I have my copy.
[40:59.400 --> 41:00.540]  You know, there's the old hits.
[41:00.540 --> 41:08.620]  The ones that are like really popular and where kids would type in chapters of it and then put their own little spin on it to be like, you know, oh, the Fixer presents.
[41:08.980 --> 41:09.100]  Okay.
[41:09.220 --> 41:11.400]  And put up their own weird little versions of this chapter.
[41:11.620 --> 41:14.800]  But what about, like, do you remember the ANSI art scene?
[41:15.000 --> 41:17.180]  You know, with like ANSI creators in demand, ACID.
[41:17.260 --> 41:20.320]  I used to do telecom for ACID way back in the day.
[41:20.500 --> 41:20.720]  Mm.
[41:20.900 --> 41:23.380]  And do you collect those old art packs?
[41:23.380 --> 41:27.100]  So, there's a scene, it's called artscene.textfiles.com.
[41:27.220 --> 41:27.900]  That's a sub-site.
[41:28.100 --> 41:30.900]  And I have pretty much all the ACID packs and all of the...
[41:30.900 --> 41:31.240]  Wow.
[41:31.480 --> 41:32.180]  ...art packs.
[41:32.380 --> 41:34.520]  And Radman of ACID.
[41:34.540 --> 41:34.920]  Oh, sure.
[41:35.080 --> 41:35.860]  I remember Radman.
[41:36.020 --> 41:36.260]  Uh-huh.
[41:36.260 --> 41:36.340]  Uh-huh.
[41:36.500 --> 41:37.800]  He's still around.
[41:38.320 --> 41:47.480]  He went and working with others tracked down a lot of art packs that had disappeared because for a while they were monthly.
[41:47.720 --> 41:53.600]  I would say, Emmanuel, 17 to 35 people who are listening care about this.
[41:53.700 --> 41:54.120]  But that's fine.
[41:54.120 --> 42:03.200]  It was a case that on the computer you could do modification of the text to make color show up on PCs and other machines.
[42:03.420 --> 42:05.120]  And so, kids...
[42:05.720 --> 42:10.040]  This is why I made a documentary on that specifically, because it fascinated me.
[42:10.040 --> 42:21.060]  These 14 to 18-year-old kids were making art and releasing it once a month from, like, 91, 92 to, like, the late 2000s.
[42:21.100 --> 42:27.720]  And they were making, like, really complicated artwork, much of it inspired by comic books.
[42:27.720 --> 42:30.640]  And they were, like, gangs.
[42:31.120 --> 42:39.740]  They would be like, oh, yeah, ICE, which was insane creations, enterprises, and then ACID, ASCII creators, or ANSI creators in demand.
[42:39.960 --> 42:41.960]  But there were, like, hundreds of them.
[42:42.060 --> 42:43.480]  And they were like, we're better.
[42:43.820 --> 42:45.140]  Here's our latest news.
[42:45.360 --> 42:45.720]  They were...
[42:45.720 --> 42:49.240]  It was weird in its own way because it was, like...
[42:49.240 --> 42:51.980]  And a huge overlap to graffiti culture.
[42:53.060 --> 42:53.800]  And so on.
[42:53.880 --> 42:54.320]  And demo scene, right?
[42:54.460 --> 42:55.000]  Like, a little bit...
[42:55.000 --> 42:56.660]  Yeah, the demo scene people started using them.
[42:56.760 --> 43:07.080]  And in fact, there is, believe it or not, you know, still an ANSI supergroup called Blocktronics that still produces regular packs.
[43:07.300 --> 43:08.540]  And what it is is...
[43:08.540 --> 43:17.040]  The best way to think of it as is it's like a supergroup of all the ANSI artists from all these different groups working together.
[43:17.040 --> 43:18.800]  They're all in their, like, 30s now.
[43:19.020 --> 43:24.840]  And so just imagine, like, all the remaining jazz artists had, like, one band they're all kind of hanging out in still.
[43:24.840 --> 43:26.540]  And they still do music once a week.
[43:26.580 --> 43:27.600]  And it could be anybody.
[43:27.740 --> 43:29.240]  And rivalries are forgotten.
[43:29.760 --> 43:30.700]  Battles are forgotten.
[43:30.700 --> 43:31.940]  We're just here to have fun.
[43:32.080 --> 43:33.800]  And so it'll be something new.
[43:34.080 --> 43:44.080]  And so every once in a while, sometimes someone contacts me and says, hey, I want to put some ANSI art on my album, or in my thing, or I would love to announce this program and have ANSI art.
[43:44.260 --> 43:45.820]  And I'll say, oh, go to Blocktronics.
[43:46.940 --> 43:48.080]  And Blocktronics is real.
[43:48.320 --> 43:51.600]  This is an amazing divergence for you, Emmanuel.
[43:51.900 --> 43:55.660]  I think we're supposed to talk about something else, but it's all fascinating to me.
[43:55.860 --> 43:56.380]  This is fascinating.
[43:56.460 --> 43:59.920]  I think you might be surprised how many people are interested by this.
[43:59.920 --> 44:02.000]  I think it's more than 17 to 35.
[44:02.360 --> 44:06.020]  And in fact, I think also you'd be amazed how many young people are into this.
[44:06.220 --> 44:09.100]  We find that young people are into old cameras.
[44:09.140 --> 44:10.260]  They're into vinyl.
[44:10.500 --> 44:11.620]  They're into old computers.
[44:12.860 --> 44:16.340]  And this type of thing, you learn so much from it.
[44:16.520 --> 44:27.420]  So if you do a Google search for 16 colors ANSI, spelling out 16, there's a guy who has really made a nice interface to browse through the old packs.
[44:27.460 --> 44:29.100]  So there's no learning involved.
[44:29.100 --> 44:32.700]  He's converted them to PNGs and JPEGs.
[44:32.780 --> 44:38.400]  And you can see the art when it came, do searches, and think of it as like a catalog of that work.
[44:38.520 --> 44:43.260]  So anybody who's listening to this who's like, this sounds vaguely interesting, but I'm very confused.
[44:43.540 --> 44:45.000]  It's called 16 colors.
[44:45.000 --> 44:56.240]  Yeah, I think there's more to this than meets the eye really because the art scene from back in the day couldn't really exist without the hacker scene in a lot of ways because you were sending these art packs around.
[44:56.400 --> 45:01.760]  You had to call BBSs that were all around the world, that were all around the country.
[45:01.760 --> 45:05.320]  You had to figure out a way to make free phone calls through your modem.
[45:05.460 --> 45:06.500]  So you had to become...
[45:06.920 --> 45:07.820]  That's where we came in.
[45:07.980 --> 45:08.620]  Yes, exactly.
[45:08.700 --> 45:09.400]  That's where we came in.
[45:09.520 --> 45:14.420]  So you had to learn how to phone freak in order to be a courier to distribute these particular types of packs.
[45:14.480 --> 45:15.120]  That's one thing.
[45:15.120 --> 45:20.040]  But then the telecom guys, like my old buddy Music Freak and I, we used to do telecom for acid.
[45:20.500 --> 45:21.700]  And you're totally right.
[45:21.700 --> 45:23.620]  This was like a gang back in the day.
[45:23.780 --> 45:24.060]  Right.
[45:24.260 --> 45:30.040]  Where, you know, we would set up, quote unquote, a teleconference, you know, an AT&T teleconference.
[45:30.040 --> 45:34.080]  I think I can talk about this because statute of limitations, it should be way far gone by now.
[45:34.180 --> 45:34.540]  I think...
[45:34.540 --> 45:35.740]  Well, you're the lawyer, so you tell me.
[45:35.840 --> 45:37.420]  If you go in, if you go in...
[45:37.420 --> 45:38.000]  About six years, yeah.
[45:38.160 --> 45:40.040]  If you go in, you got the greatest story.
[45:40.160 --> 45:42.940]  They'll all leave you alone because they'll be like, what are you in for?
[45:42.940 --> 45:46.740]  And it'll be like, well, you see, I used to run the CBS art group.
[45:47.360 --> 45:47.400]  Telecom.
[45:47.400 --> 45:47.880]  Telecom work.
[45:47.980 --> 45:48.520]  You know how it was.
[45:48.600 --> 45:53.420]  But it's crazy because, you know, we'd set up these telecom conferences for acid, right?
[45:53.520 --> 45:54.740]  And they would be going all night.
[45:54.940 --> 46:00.960]  You know, it would start at 11 PM and you'd have people calling in because this was the only way we could all get on the phone together.
[46:01.460 --> 46:08.100]  Because acid was strewn about the United States and some people were overseas and they would call into this 800 number and hang out and talk.
[46:08.320 --> 46:14.300]  But then if somebody leaked the number to somebody from ICE, they would call into the teleconference and then you had a toner on the line.
[46:14.500 --> 46:17.540]  Somebody who would just huddle down a touch tone and destroy your conference call.
[46:17.640 --> 46:18.060]  Toners, yeah.
[46:18.260 --> 46:18.620]  Remember that?
[46:18.660 --> 46:19.420]  The bane of my existence.
[46:19.720 --> 46:20.480]  Oh my God.
[46:20.900 --> 46:22.260]  I'll take a shot at blowing your mind.
[46:22.320 --> 46:24.220]  Do you remember the ANSI artist Jed?
[46:24.580 --> 46:24.940]  Yes.
[46:25.360 --> 46:25.620]  Okay.
[46:25.820 --> 46:27.200]  Do you know about the big secret about Jed?
[46:27.360 --> 46:28.000]  I do not.
[46:28.200 --> 46:29.040]  Jed was 10.
[46:29.560 --> 46:29.920]  Wow.
[46:30.680 --> 46:32.420]  And so they would have a...
[46:32.420 --> 46:35.900]  So Radman would call Jed first on the teleconference.
[46:36.060 --> 46:43.940]  They'd get their business done with him so he could hang up because they didn't want the other members to know that a 10 year old was one of the top artists.
[46:44.160 --> 46:44.660]  That's amazing.
[46:44.760 --> 46:45.600]  He probably had to go to bed.
[46:45.900 --> 46:46.380]  Exactly.
[46:46.560 --> 46:54.700]  And so I interviewed him and he's like, you know, he's like 23 or something talking like a hardened veteran because he was 10.
[46:54.700 --> 46:59.840]  Anyway, those kind of funny, weird little stories are why I love the history side.
[47:00.360 --> 47:00.720]  Absolutely.
[47:01.120 --> 47:11.080]  Well, you know, if people have archives of their own, if they have, say, printouts of old BBSs or even floppies that might still work, what should they do?
[47:11.300 --> 47:13.780]  Oh, again, Jason at textfiles.com.
[47:13.900 --> 47:14.840]  I would love that.
[47:14.980 --> 47:17.100]  One of the hardest things to find right now.
[47:17.100 --> 47:33.800]  I mean, old FidoNet message sets, old anything involving message bases from any time before 2000 is what I think of as like the most ethereal, most prone to being lost.
[47:34.420 --> 47:35.920]  Usenet's not so bad.
[47:36.160 --> 47:38.040]  The archive has been doing a pretty good job.
[47:38.040 --> 47:45.480]  We haven't made a search engine like used to exist with Deja News, but we have pretty much all the text, not the binaries from Usenet.
[47:45.700 --> 47:52.780]  But I'm worried about like weird bulletin board system networks that used to exist that have all of these unique messages.
[47:53.260 --> 47:54.160]  They're not big.
[47:54.320 --> 47:57.040]  I'm sure they're sitting on someone's floppies or hard drives.
[47:57.200 --> 47:58.180]  I would love those.
[47:58.280 --> 48:00.280]  I would love to have that cultural piece there.
[48:00.440 --> 48:02.180]  Because, I mean, we have a lot.
[48:02.420 --> 48:03.040]  We have evidence.
[48:03.260 --> 48:05.960]  Like, we're not ruined for it.
[48:06.020 --> 48:07.800]  We have evidence of these old bulletin boards.
[48:07.900 --> 48:08.880]  We have these old lists.
[48:09.040 --> 48:09.900]  We have that stuff.
[48:10.420 --> 48:11.740]  But the more, the better.
[48:12.060 --> 48:14.140]  Because otherwise it becomes, right?
[48:14.220 --> 48:19.980]  We have one piece of chipped paint from the temple instead of understanding anything else about the temple.
[48:20.200 --> 48:20.720]  One brick.
[48:21.000 --> 48:21.500]  You know?
[48:21.560 --> 48:23.120]  And I would love to have more of that.
[48:23.260 --> 48:27.900]  We never seem to get to the state where we create something new and we save it from the beginning.
[48:28.120 --> 48:32.900]  You know, whether you go back to the days of old films or, you know, the first BBSs.
[48:33.000 --> 48:34.900]  It seems like we always forget to save it.
[48:35.080 --> 48:35.460]  You know?
[48:35.580 --> 48:36.540]  I'm very...
[48:36.540 --> 48:37.900]  I'm always...
[48:37.900 --> 48:43.000]  I mean, well, first of all, as a species, we make the same mistakes over and over.
[48:43.120 --> 48:44.660]  And we're really good at it, right?
[48:44.980 --> 48:48.900]  And there are a lot of cases where early stuff happens.
[48:49.180 --> 48:54.540]  And it's whoever has that bug and they become the dominant voice.
[48:54.880 --> 49:00.320]  So, you know, let's say that right now we have, let's say, renegade genetics.
[49:00.320 --> 49:04.840]  Like, right now there's some group of people right now that we barely know about because they're underground.
[49:04.840 --> 49:06.720]  They shouldn't be doing it, but they're doing genetic work.
[49:07.800 --> 49:09.360]  Well, are they going to keep photos?
[49:09.380 --> 49:10.240]  Because they might get in trouble.
[49:10.520 --> 49:12.720]  And then, are they going to record it?
[49:12.780 --> 49:14.880]  And one guy might be like, you know, we got to record this man.
[49:14.920 --> 49:16.400]  And he's going to record a bunch of them.
[49:16.400 --> 49:20.420]  But maybe that gets destroyed at the first sign of trouble.
[49:20.680 --> 49:22.060]  Or nobody thinks to tell anybody.
[49:22.080 --> 49:25.280]  Or he puts it in his basement and he moves six times.
[49:26.300 --> 49:27.600]  That's the story.
[49:27.600 --> 49:30.080]  We're going to make that mistake again and again and again.
[49:30.220 --> 49:35.520]  And my hope is only oral histories and reaching out and getting pleasantly surprised.
[49:35.520 --> 49:38.320]  At 2600, we try to save everything.
[49:38.320 --> 49:38.980]  We try.
[49:39.160 --> 49:42.360]  And it's amazing how much we lose, even though we try.
[49:42.520 --> 49:46.780]  Something that you'd think, obviously, we would have copies of, we can't find anywhere.
[49:46.900 --> 49:49.840]  But we have tried to save everything from every issue.
[49:49.840 --> 49:51.700]  We've tried to save every radio show.
[49:52.520 --> 49:55.260]  And it's a challenge to do that.
[49:55.320 --> 50:02.880]  But it's also very rewarding when you realize, wow, I can go back and look at this and see just how this evolved, this developed.
[50:03.360 --> 50:09.220]  And if everybody did something like that, there would be more dominant voices, as you say, of the history.
[50:09.520 --> 50:09.660]  Right.
[50:09.740 --> 50:10.700]  And we'd be able to...
[50:10.700 --> 50:11.140]  We'd understand.
[50:11.240 --> 50:13.960]  Because otherwise, we fall so easily into the narrative.
[50:14.260 --> 50:14.360]  Right?
[50:14.600 --> 50:17.040]  Like, to some people, you created the hacker zine.
[50:17.140 --> 50:17.980]  I know, right?
[50:18.100 --> 50:18.780]  That's crazy.
[50:18.900 --> 50:19.360]  That's crazy.
[50:19.360 --> 50:22.380]  It's a sign that you did a very good hacker zine.
[50:22.480 --> 50:24.020]  But there have been other hacker zines.
[50:24.080 --> 50:24.540]  There have been other hacker zines.
[50:24.540 --> 50:25.620]  There are ones before it.
[50:25.680 --> 50:26.720]  There are ones during it.
[50:26.800 --> 50:29.060]  There are, you know, well, we don't know about after yet.
[50:29.060 --> 50:30.360]  But what are we left?
[50:30.520 --> 50:32.460]  But, you know, like, that narrative.
[50:32.460 --> 50:36.580]  And while it's... as a person, it's very complimentary, right?
[50:36.640 --> 50:40.400]  To think of... to have people tell them like, oh, yeah, Emmanuel created all hacker zines.
[50:41.680 --> 50:47.060]  It does a disservice to understanding like, well, this is actually why it's even more special of what he did.
[50:47.060 --> 50:49.660]  Because look at how fleeting some of the others were.
[50:49.780 --> 50:51.580]  Look what their subjects were and look what it was.
[50:51.740 --> 50:52.900]  We won't understand it.
[50:53.020 --> 51:00.300]  And then we'll just create a cartoon version, call it a day, and then use it to our advantage when we're trying to prove a point.
[51:00.400 --> 51:00.940]  And that's it.
[51:01.040 --> 51:02.300]  And that's... I think we can do better.
[51:02.300 --> 51:06.320]  Yeah, it's open to revisionism and distorting of what actually happened.
[51:06.840 --> 51:13.720]  That's why I always like to save things in unedited forms whenever possible, such as help talks.
[51:13.840 --> 51:16.860]  We try to save every single talk that's given at the help conference.
[51:17.040 --> 51:21.360]  We try to save every single radio show, every single article.
[51:21.860 --> 51:26.620]  And it's, you know, that's part of the history is just having all of that firsthand knowledge.
[51:26.900 --> 51:29.340]  And I can't stress enough the importance of that.
[51:29.340 --> 51:38.380]  But, you know, even with this intent of ours to save everything, I don't know how many people remember, we used to run a voice BBS many years ago.
[51:39.120 --> 51:47.080]  And what that was, basically, it was like a voicemail system, but we made the voicemail messages public so that it would act like a BBS, but be audio.
[51:47.360 --> 51:54.260]  So you could go, okay, I want to listen to message number three on this particular board, and you'd hear audio from somebody speaking into a phone late at night.
[51:54.680 --> 51:56.160]  We can't read those messages.
[51:56.280 --> 52:03.620]  We have the messages, we have the audio files, but the audio standard has fallen into obscurity.
[52:03.780 --> 52:05.260]  Get those to me, I got people.
[52:05.420 --> 52:08.420]  Even the people who invented the system don't know how to do it.
[52:08.460 --> 52:09.400]  It was called Big Mouth.
[52:09.720 --> 52:10.240]  Big Mouth.
[52:10.400 --> 52:11.980]  Yeah, talking technologies, I remember.
[52:12.160 --> 52:14.640]  And we have no way of reading them.
[52:15.620 --> 52:19.360]  Not only that, but we have the original box that the software came in.
[52:19.360 --> 52:21.940]  It's in the basement of our offices.
[52:22.560 --> 52:23.500]  The sub-basement.
[52:23.680 --> 52:25.560]  The sub-sub-sub-basement.
[52:25.660 --> 52:30.600]  But we did contact the developer of that software.
[52:30.800 --> 52:32.500]  They still are sort of around.
[52:32.500 --> 52:36.700]  You can sort of kind of get a hold of them and find them on Google Maps, whatever.
[52:37.780 --> 52:39.040]  Don't leave them a voicemail.
[52:39.200 --> 52:39.760]  They won't hear it.
[52:39.800 --> 52:44.420]  We had this discussion on the radio, and we had listeners trying to get a copy to see if...
[52:44.420 --> 52:45.360]  And I never heard back.
[52:45.360 --> 52:46.340]  I sent them the files.
[52:46.340 --> 52:47.200]  I heard nothing.
[52:47.200 --> 52:49.360]  So we have all of these old voicemails.
[52:49.500 --> 52:55.440]  And actually, the hard drive and motherboard for the machine it was on still exists.
[52:55.440 --> 53:00.280]  I have an old Apple power supply kind of rigged up to it.
[53:00.400 --> 53:02.300]  And it actually does boot and work.
[53:02.500 --> 53:03.620]  It's Windows 3.
[53:03.800 --> 53:04.800]  Windows 3.1, I think.
[53:04.940 --> 53:05.420]  Absolutely.
[53:06.040 --> 53:09.600]  So, again, sub-sub-basement project.
[53:09.860 --> 53:13.340]  But we have the book, or the box that this software came in.
[53:13.340 --> 53:19.400]  I mean, we have everything around it, except the very thing, which is the artifact of what we made with this.
[53:19.520 --> 53:21.500]  I would love to hear those messages again.
[53:21.640 --> 53:23.760]  They're from, what, the 1990s, was it?
[53:24.040 --> 53:26.520]  It had to be around 94, probably, I think.
[53:26.680 --> 53:27.520]  94, 95.
[53:27.800 --> 53:28.040]  Wow.
[53:28.180 --> 53:28.400]  Must have been.
[53:28.620 --> 53:29.620]  Maybe we'll get something going.
[53:29.840 --> 53:33.600]  But I had this collection from Kingpin of the L0pht, who just...
[53:33.600 --> 53:33.980]  Oh, yeah, Kingpin.
[53:34.140 --> 53:34.780]  Who just...
[53:34.780 --> 53:35.360]  They just...
[53:35.360 --> 53:42.740]  I think it was today that they all showed up for the 20th anniversary of their cyber security talk that they gave to Congress back...
[53:42.740 --> 53:45.240]  Oh, where they could shut down the internet in 20 minutes or something?
[53:45.400 --> 53:47.160]  Yeah, that caused a lot of grief.
[53:47.400 --> 53:51.080]  Four of the members came back to, like, kind of talk, and where are we now?
[53:51.140 --> 53:51.340]  Uh-huh.
[53:51.400 --> 53:51.920]  Kind of a thing.
[53:52.380 --> 53:57.920]  Well, Kingpin's been pretty good about his history, and he gave me some WAV files.
[53:58.100 --> 54:02.340]  And they were WAV files of voicemail boxes.
[54:02.720 --> 54:05.460]  So they were, you know, like, hey, welcome to the...
[54:05.460 --> 54:09.280]  Like, these were the most ethereal ones, because they would swap out six times a day.
[54:09.900 --> 54:10.540]  It's one of those.
[54:10.860 --> 54:19.100]  I was literally about to mention the old voicemail hacking scene, because that's something that was really, truly, you know, ephemeral.
[54:19.280 --> 54:23.760]  But it was such an interesting scene, too, because you had real luminaries that people would follow.
[54:23.920 --> 54:24.980]  You would have voicemail boxes.
[54:25.260 --> 54:25.880]  He gave me...
[54:25.880 --> 54:29.180]  You know, direct dial 800 voicemail boxes were in such high demand.
[54:29.480 --> 54:29.540]  Sure.
[54:29.940 --> 54:37.520]  You know, hacking a sysadmin box, and then creating a bunch of boxes for your friends, and people would distribute calling cards and credit cards and secret messages.
[54:37.520 --> 54:41.840]  Well, yeah, that wasn't really the point, to distribute all kinds of stolen information, but some people did that.
[54:41.840 --> 54:46.040]  Well, you had to have that stolen information if you wanted to, you know, courier around these particular art packs.
[54:46.040 --> 54:55.420]  I remember discovering IBM's audio distribution system way back in the 1980s, before voicemail even existed for the masses.
[54:55.580 --> 55:01.380]  It was basically a mainframe that was used by IBM, except they didn't use it nearly as much as the hackers did.
[55:01.380 --> 55:01.920]  Sure.
[55:01.920 --> 55:07.280]  And the password, of course, was IBM, so you were able to get in, and you were able to send messages to other hijacked accounts.
[55:07.480 --> 55:15.160]  It was the coolest thing in the world, being able to do this, because before that, there was no way to send a message to somebody in a different part of the country by calling an 800 number.
[55:15.400 --> 55:16.200]  Yeah, it was awesome.
[55:16.360 --> 55:21.000]  So the messages that Kingpin gave me are up on the archive, and there's like a half dozen of them.
[55:21.060 --> 55:26.780]  And they're very funny, because, you know, they're like, these kids had these, like, really fast talking, because they only have, like, a minute.
[55:26.780 --> 55:31.020]  And they're just like, this is going on, this is here, this is here, call this one, get this thing, and the next one.
[55:31.360 --> 55:34.140]  And, like, playing guitar very quickly, and then, like, going on to the next thing.
[55:34.240 --> 55:40.500]  And you can just totally, you can totally have an insight into this weird little thing that should have never existed past that day.
[55:40.500 --> 55:41.560]  Jason, we can talk for hours.
[55:41.560 --> 55:41.840]  I know.
[55:41.880 --> 55:42.760]  We're out of time.
[55:42.940 --> 55:45.220]  How do people get a hold of the Internet Archive?
[55:45.220 --> 55:45.900]  How do they help?
[55:46.240 --> 55:46.580]  Sure.
[55:46.580 --> 55:48.580]  Well, the archive is archive.org.
[55:48.580 --> 55:59.280]  You're probably using it to see the Wayback Machine, but there's petabytes and petabytes of other cultural information there, everything from movies and music and software, books, you name it.
[55:59.420 --> 56:04.500]  And I'm Jason at textfiles.com if you want to talk to me about something there.
[56:04.520 --> 56:08.500]  And if I can help you, I will do my best to help you, give you that leg up.
[56:08.620 --> 56:10.140]  I always love hearing from people.
[56:10.180 --> 56:15.520]  And because we never got a chance to mention it, I will be at Hope and doing some stuff there.
[56:15.680 --> 56:17.280]  I'll be hosting Hackers Got Talent.
[56:17.420 --> 56:27.180]  Hackers Got Talent, the super popular feature where basically, what, a hacker can just show up and present some kind of a talent, anything, and win a prize.
[56:27.320 --> 56:29.540]  And last year, descended into chaos.
[56:29.540 --> 56:31.060]  I expect much of the same.
[56:31.980 --> 56:37.460]  And I'll be there for at least most of the conference and have a talk and everything.
[56:38.020 --> 56:38.540]  Very cool.
[56:39.180 --> 56:40.260]  All right, Jason, thank you so much.
[56:40.360 --> 56:45.880]  And thank you to the people who have been calling in to 516-620-3602 to pledge their support and the website.
[56:45.880 --> 56:49.060]  If you're listening to this later on, give to WBAI.org.
[56:49.500 --> 56:51.460]  And we should be back again next week.
[56:51.460 --> 56:59.640]  Please keep supporting the radio station and keep looking for cool things in your basement and closets and sharing it when you find it.
[57:00.160 --> 57:01.140]  We'll see you next time.
[57:01.240 --> 57:01.420]  Good night.
[57:11.240 --> 57:13.960]  I'm sick of being hacked and attacked by these quacks.
[57:14.020 --> 57:15.140]  So it's time to level up.
[57:15.260 --> 57:16.440]  Gonna have to fight back.
[57:16.560 --> 57:17.680]  No, I haven't given up.
[57:17.820 --> 57:19.040]  I just need to lie low.
[57:19.160 --> 57:19.640]  Then whack.
[57:19.780 --> 57:21.680]  I attack him with a hammer like Moe.
[57:21.760 --> 57:22.860]  And then like Woe.
[57:22.900 --> 57:24.120]  They see what they're up against.
[57:24.400 --> 57:26.740]  Security so dense it doesn't even make sense.
[57:26.840 --> 57:29.260]  My database sits behind a three-headed lizard.
[57:29.260 --> 57:31.820]  And my firewall was cast by a level nine wizard.
[57:32.080 --> 57:33.660]  Far beyond HTTPS.
[57:33.780 --> 57:35.040]  I'm on HTTPX.
[57:35.220 --> 57:36.940]  And I'm looking into what they're doing next.
[57:37.120 --> 57:39.500]  My files are encrypted with the channel through time.
[57:39.640 --> 57:41.280]  And everything is stored in base nine.
[57:41.520 --> 57:42.120]  So it's fine.
[57:42.260 --> 57:42.980]  Come at me.
[57:43.220 --> 57:44.480]  Got a new attack vector.
[57:44.480 --> 57:45.460]  What could that be?
[57:45.680 --> 57:48.020]  Found a novel new way to attack me.
[57:48.180 --> 57:48.360]  Nah.
[57:48.620 --> 57:50.740]  Your scripts are all useless and hackneyed.
[57:51.200 --> 57:51.680]  Exactly.
[57:52.160 --> 57:53.140]  Come at me.
[57:53.520 --> 57:54.740]  Got a new attack vector.
[57:54.740 --> 57:55.640]  What could that be?
[57:56.080 --> 57:58.220]  Found a novel new way to attack me.
[57:58.220 --> 57:58.600]  Nah.
[57:58.780 --> 58:01.020]  Your scripts are all useless and hackneyed.
[58:01.480 --> 58:01.900]  Exactly.
[58:02.320 --> 58:03.640]  I blocked them out again.
[58:03.700 --> 58:07.480]  And did I forget to mention that I can VPN into another dimension?
[58:07.760 --> 58:10.320]  And then should I try to blow the mind of every last nerd?
[58:10.460 --> 58:12.880]  I tell them there's imaginary numbers in my password.
[58:12.880 --> 58:22.880]  Password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password,
[58:22.880 --> 58:31.420]  password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password, password.
[58:31.420 --> 58:34.420]  So you think that you're hack or proof?
[58:34.600 --> 58:35.080]  Poof.
[58:35.320 --> 58:37.720]  Here I come to enact the truth.
[58:37.980 --> 58:42.240]  My four-pole battle axe attacks will smack your firewall into submission.
[58:42.620 --> 58:44.860]  Listen, it's a battle of attrition.
[58:45.360 --> 58:47.960]  This is a strike from the highest of heights.
[58:48.240 --> 58:50.240]  And it could come in the day or the night.
[58:50.360 --> 58:51.520]  Like a data wipe.
[58:51.680 --> 58:53.060]  Once your sight's in my sight.
[58:53.180 --> 58:54.780]  I just remember the smite.
[58:54.900 --> 58:55.900]  I don't remember the smite.
[59:01.420 --> 59:08.340]  I'm not driving my Gasco's Ling SUV, texting my friends on my handheld mobile device, or listening to my local Clear Channel affiliate.
[59:08.340 --> 59:14.760]  I'm definitely tuned to WBAI, listener-supported non-commercial radio in New York City, 99.5 FM.