Previous U. of Illinois Starts Construction of Sustainable Supercomputer Center |
Next Study to Explore How Social-Networking Sites Influence Voting Behavior |
November 03, 2008, 01:38 PM ET
What Should Go in a Museum of Internet History?
Orlando — Douglas Gale, a consultant who spent most of his career as a college technology leader, has been working since 2003 to collect oral histories and artifacts from the inventors of the Internet. And now he’s working to get the collection out of his garage and into a museum or other formal setting.
Mr. Gale helped lead a session at the Educause conference here late last week to discuss the next steps for his project, which is now called the Internet History Archive. His hope is to create a non-profit organization called the Internet Legacy Institute, which will try to work with an existing museum or college to create a public exhibit on the history of the Internet. The institute might also offer fellowships, curate online exhibits and wikis about Internet history, and sponsor other projects.
Even though the Internet is a relatively young technology, its history is already fairly well documented. But Mr. Gale argues that many of the leading accounts of the global network’s beginnings give short shrift to the role academics and college technology officials played in its creation.
So what should go in an Internet-history museum? So far Mr. Gale has focused on audio and video recordings that he has made of his interviews with early Internet geeks. But he said that other artifacts could go in the museum too. “I’ve got a Bitnet button,” he said, describing a pin that was created to celebrate the creation of the early computer network developed by universities. And of course he has some old modems and network routers lying around. Those devices are just a few decades old, but they already look like ancient technology.
Mr. Gale’s next step is to try to seek grant funding — and to dig up more material for the archive, of course. —Jeffrey R. Young
Categories: Research
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.