Historian and loudmouth Jason Scott shares stories of technology, retrocomputing, documentary filmmaking, and general schennanigans from his decades of travels and research. From experiences on the road while shooting documentaries to often-obscure points of order, Jason keeps a fast-moving pace and…
The Tape Baking Episode: The Cult of Baked Tapes, The Problem With Magnetic Media, Potential Solutions, Tape Baking Recipe, Digital and Analog Solutions, The Singular Moment on Tapes, A Very Long Consideration of Personalities. Weirdly, the best page I found on tape baking as an introduction is so retro you aren't 100% sure if they're not intentionally doing an aesthetic, but here it is, courtesy of Wendy Carlos: If I'd Have Known You Were Coming I'd Have Baked a Tape!
The Internet Archive Downtime Episode: Not About the Archive, Downtime, What My Job Is, Switching Gears, Finding Purpose, A Chain Instead of a Pile, Two Hours, Purpose, Other Shifts. A rumination on what I even am, when the Internet Archive experiences an extensive downtime. It turns out, what I am is satisfied.
The Setback Comeback Episode. A rumination on working through dark periods, set to a cadence of strength and resilience but recognition of the realism of life. I'm breaking the usual rule and making this one public immediately on here, for patrons to send to anyone who needs to hear it.
The Shockwave of Proximity Episode: A Short Trip, Los Angeles, Giving the Best Interview, Honks and Sounds, Return and Forget, Documentary Release, Scrubbing and Watching, The Shocking Revelation, The Arc of Dreams, The Blessed Golden Dias. The name of the documentary I mentioned, "Games that Rocked the World" is currently available at this URL: https://therokuchannel.roku.com/details/793efb00a33ba64bbcb44fa4981ca1a2
The Ever-Present To-Do List: The Giving of Advice, Piles, To-Do, Addressing the Options, Understanding the Trudge, The Pile Behind Instead of the Pile Before, The Moments of Confusion, The Dedication, 90 Percent, The Final Tally. Advice and thoughts on dealing with what can feel like an infinite, ever-present to-do list. Since moving to the new office, things have been very productive, but even at 10x productivity, the concerns still reign.
A Large Collection, Stories in a Collection, Capturing Infocom, Financialization, Families and Friends and Grief, Using The Skills You Have, Settling With Your Choices. Someone tried to sell an awful lot of Infocom and Infocom-Related items on auction and is trying again, and I had some related thoughts about collecting, selling, and using opportunities.
No Tragedy Ahead, A Quick Exit, Expectations of Childhood, Stability and Home Base, Approaching the World, Valets and Storage Units, Where The Thinking Takes You, Fainting Spell, Possibilities and Paranoia, Talk Changes, Finding the Stability Regardless. A rumination on my constant contingency planning, ever-present, in everything.
Setting Up Tapes, The Bob Cooper Collection, Bob Cooper Biography, Imaging 3/4 Tape, Fuzziness and History, A Lost Era of Television, Everything Falling Apart, Aiming for the Best, Fixing Without Perfection. I was sent a massive amount of boxes of Bob Cooper, who did Satellite Television related material for years, and who recorded many neat videos in doing so. Bob's site, still working: https://bobcooper.tv/ The Bob Cooper Collection at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bob-cooper
Officially at the New Office, The Advantages, The Size, The Dimensions, Multiple Projects, Facing Your Own History, Trash and Treasure, Walking Down My Own World, Physical, Deep Storage, The Hope. A few thoughts about the new office, which is nearly 8 times larger, has every project and piece of myself in it, and will hopefully, although not guaranteed, help me finally kill my backlog.
Hearing of the Living Computer Museum, Illegally Parking, Artifacts and Items, The Paul Allen Story (Short Version), A Conversation with Stephen Jones, The Grand Plan, Delchi's Consoles, The MADE, Cryosleep, Highest Bidders, The Billions, A Part of History, The Lessons Learned The Living Computer Museum is not returning and its contents will be auctioned. At least, the big ticket items. I'm not happy about this and neither is anyone else, but here we are. At least there's some glimmers in the darkness. Following my general credo of "Always Take Pictures", here's two Flickr galleries of Living Computers I took over some of my visits: https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157635312051527 https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157700864034805
The Second Part, HOPE's Second New Year, Attendance, Location, Improvements, A Striking Walk Through Classrooms, The Legacy Speech, Friends, Lore, Legacy, Ed Piskor, Cheshire Catalyst, Kevin Mitnick, Sinitar, What We Leave Behind, The Extra Effort, A Summary. I had a wonderful time at HOPE 15 (2024) and consider it my home hacker conference now. I wore three suits and made many new friends, and I'm sure the recordings will be a joy to watch.
Finding A New Space, Failure to Communicate, New Home, Aspects I Like, Enclosed Spaces, The Grand Plan, The Far-Reaching Intentions, One At A Time, Potential Helpers, The Finances, The Future. With the addition of a new office space, I intend to jettison into a new layer of what I do. Let's hope for the best.
Hitting 300 of Anything, Humble Towel Beginnings, Possible Audience Rotation, What Drives The Tales, Finding Subjects, Broken Strings, Eagerness and Dread, An Invisible Audience, The Future. An episode celebrating 300 episodes of this podcast, with a specific bent to telling people how the audience is what matters - while I have what is now dozens and dozens of hours of talking about myself and the world, it needs listeners to be meaningful. As I mention in the episode, I considered ending things here at 300, but I'm still enjoying the process enough to keep going. Here's to more.
Procrastination By Sorting, Memories of Magazines, Computer Awareness, Obscurity and General Interest, Compute!, Creative Computing, Reader Service, The Gained Bricks of Foundation, The Waterfall of Text, A Prayer of Appreciation. Whenever I sow seeds of doubt something good has happened with the work I do, I just look at the magazine rack at the Internet Archive and love walking its stacks and collections. Here's some thoughts on that.
Giving a Speech at HOPE, The Concept of Legacy, The Approach to Subjects, Ed Piskor, Cheshire Catalyst, Best and Worst Speech, Short Deadlines, Light Work, Where I Intend to Go, The Awaiting Deadlines, The Truest Legacy. I'm giving a speech at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) this year, and I figured it might be fun to describe this situation before and after I do it. Here's the before.
Going To A Show, Meeting Robert Harris, Film Restoration, The Brittle Nature of Film, Film Is Dead All Hail Film, Meeting Mister Harris, Inspirations and Permissions, The Prickliness, Living Your Version of the Dream. I was lucky enough to meet Robert A. Harris, who is a film restorer par excellence and who I'd looked up to for decades. What a gift!
Edging Into The Office, Stacks and Wires, Process and Teardown, A Version of a Version, Dreams of the Next Process. As I wind up the current office and move to another one, some contemplations on how messy it is right now.
Emulation, James Gerrie, Weak Specifications, The User Interface Wall, Press SCRL LCK and F2, The Tiny Pipe to the Shot Glass, Inspiration, Kind of Finished, The Relentless and Inspiring Curation. Some appreciation for someone being so dedicated to a machine (the Tandy MC 10) that they got it working at the Archive and are adding hundreds of new software titles to it across the days. We need this kind of energy, especially as computers age out.
Saying No to the Renewal, Moving Into The Office, A Blank Canvas, Choices Made, The Thousands and Hundreds, The Separation of Home and Work, FInding Limits, Future Unknowns. A small meditation on the office I work in, as I choose not to renew the lease. I'd like to thank Kay Savetz and FAXZERO.COM for being a major supporter of it so that the real estate costs didn't crater my bank account.
An Uninteresting Square Building By The Road, $25, Far as the Eye Can See, Walking the Games, The Usual Experience, Endless Rooms, Experiencing Videogames Again, Memories of Internet Arcade, Broken, Real Arcades, The Joy of the New to Old. A memory of visiting the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Illinois, billing itself as the largest arcade, but at the very least, an absolutely insane amount of hundreds of unique games that you can all-you-can-play.
All-Sport, Megagym, Racquetball Camp, Benches, Numbers, Lines, Designs, Waves Not Blocks, Frog Design, Attachment, The Font. A rumination on a font and some lines that had an effect on me. I mention Frog Design, here's an example of the kind of pages out there: https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-early-apple-prototypes-2014-6
No Specific End, A Couple Boxes, Expeditions, Ham Radio, QSL Cards, The Tapes Arrive, Digitizing for a Week, Exotics, Blur, VHS Feel, Preservation. A pleasant surprise as a pile of "DX-Peditions" showed up in the inbox. The resulting collection, done by me and Kay Savetz, is here: https://archive.org/details/dx-peditions
What is Selling Out, This Podcast, The Facts of Working for Money, The Forks and Compromises, Thoughts and Concerns For Others' Journeys, Crossroads, Consistency, Your Own Conclusions. Some thoughts on what "Selling Out" means.
Reminding Myself of a Lost Media Show, What is Lost Media, What is Lost, Turn-on, The Thrill of Finding, Endless Uploads, ZIPs inside ISOs, That Old Razzle-Dazzle, Campfire Stories. Never let it be said I won't talk about a show without telling you where to find it. The Lost Media videos I'm talking about are here on Youtube, scary music and all: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKM8YX6ZzGblS97Y2llFP-HsNKFvlqy7C And here's the "Lost Media" of TURN ON: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDpum0Jp7Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwRYpqTpCU4
A Talk Accepted, Rare Appearances, The Gist of Software, The Accomplishments and the Achievements, What's Next, What's Coming, What Will We Do, The Challenges, The Possibilities, The Purpose of a Talk. About a talk I'll be giving this year, where it is rare that I'm doing any sort of talk that isn't just a (fun) advertisement for the Internet Archive. What's next with emulation and game preservation?
A Double-Tape UFO Conspiracy, A Life of Forbidden Knowledge, The Assumption of Presentation, The Ease of Misdirection, A Momentary Pause, Handing to Next Generations. Plus: An Hour with Wayne Green. Some thoughts that ran through my mind while I was digitizing a UFO Conspiracy tape.
Attending the Game Developers Conference, the Expo Floor, The Booths, The Floor, Pamphlet Game, Meeting Manifestos and Dreams, The Mag Chain. A discovery of a new way to approach a conference floor and make it into a game, which I enjoyed playing very much at the GDC Expo.
An Invitation to a Scheme, Some Thoughts on Lemonade, Wash Trading, The Ultimate Plan, A Special Little Cat. Some charlatans tried to get me to enter into a scheme around the memory of Sockington. This is about to go very not-well for them, but I wanted to share my thoughts on it before going full firestorm. All Hail Sockington.
Yet More AI, The Eye of the Storm, Little Computer People, Eliza, The Sims, SIGGRAPH, Imagination Overload, Analysis, Excitement, Empathy, Curious, Forever. A rumination of the echoes of revolution, told from one person's life. Part 4 of 4.
A Computer Lab, Browsers, Surfing, Electronic Zine, Endless Linking, What's New, Web MUD, Extensions and Add-Ons, CENTER Heresy, TEXTFILES.COM, Early Blog, Finger Servers, Growth and Complication, Lost Taste, Simplicity Underneath, Money Money, Walking Away, My Waiting Piano. A rumination of the echoes of revolution, told from one person's life. Part 3 of 4.
Before My Time, Meetings and Considerations, Terminus, Command Line, FTP and Gopher, UNIX Lingua Franca, MUDs, Endless Time, Waiting for Me, Ghost in the Present, Fragile and Permanent, Doomed to Disappear. A rumination of the echoes of revolution, told from one person's life. Part 2 of 4.
Fishing, Night, Truck, Grandfather, Empty, Modem, Moments, Boards, Phones, Fear, Elation, Soul, Duality, Broken, DIscord, Heights, Memories, Places, Heart, Simple, Enjoyment. A rumination of the echoes of revolution, told from one person's life. Part 1 of 4.
The Transcription and Summarization Episode: LLMs, Modems, Magic, Technology, Infinite Toys, Change, Promises, Reality, Tascam, Amiga, Manuals, Summarization, Weird But Tireless, Always a Revolution. Some quick thoughts on the world of LLMs as they start entering my life (and many others) from the point of view of a half century of technology.
The UMATIC Gems Episode: A Small Hot Room, The Mechanisms, The Robots, 40-50 Years, Sony and From Another World, Tensions and Read Heads, Tapes and Decay, The Lifespan, The Future, The Joy of Saving, The Potentials and Possibilities, Mark Pines. A rumination on the UMATIC tape decks in my office, which are large, loud and hot.
The Bad Review Episode: 2 Stars Out of 5, Bad Cinematography and No Effort, The Timeline of the BBS Documentary, Choices Made, Experiences Lived, 10 to 15 Minutes, A Crew of One, The Unknown End, The Results, GET LAMP, Your Project's Future. A rumination on a 2/5 review I got in 2017 on Amazon for the BBS Documentary. Believe me, I'm quite sure the BBS Documentary is quite fine, but it was nice to remember how weird and unknown the project started out as.
The Appreciation For Spaces Episode: A Moment of Recognition, A Time of Containment, The Best Separation, Thanks to Sponsorship and Gifts, The Rooms I've Travelled, A Consistency of Inconsistency, A Moment For You. Perhaps a well-needed acknowledgement of the time of the moment where I have a lovely office to do my work and get things done. Thanks, by the way, to FAXZERO.COM who throw money each month so I can stream from the office without sweating rent as much.
The Industrial Spaces Episode: Hurricane Electric, Ikea Paramus, Customers and Hybrid Customers, Beach Chairs, 19-Inch Racks, Content Delivery Networks, Approaches to Space and Cost, New York Conveyor Basements, Payments in Pain. And Mangoes. A rumination on a few industrial spaces I recently spent time in, as well as a greater and perhaps too-late respect for the costs of poor environments.
The CLIVE Episode: Introduction To The CLIVE, Our High School Parents, Not Just a Salesman, Where Are They Sitting, Working With The CLIVE, Lessons and Learning, The Other End of Layoffs, Reading the Room, Thanks To The CLIVE, A Final Domain Gift. Memories and thoughts about THE CLIVE, the father of one of my high school friends, who was the best salesman I ever met.
The Voice Quality Episode: A Very Bad Idea, Public Speaking, My Thoughts on Audience, The Unspoken Guarantee, Sickness and Health, Voice and Articulation, The Roads Not Taken, Finding Your Voice. Some ruminations on my speaking voice, and qualities and issues related to it.
The Learning Process Episode: My Extreme Oscillation in Learning, Why I Learned The Way I Did, BBSes and Textfiles, Where This Worked, Fastest Temp, The Non-Threat of Failure, The Narrative, What Has Changed. A rumination on my personal learning process and where it has gotten better (or not) and why I think that it all worked out, ultimately.
The Time Bandits Episode: The Dutchess Mall, Movies 4, Suburbia Boring/Excellence, Chaotic Universe, Surpreme Being, Great Evil, Foundations, Portals of BBSes, Robbery of Textfiles, Before It's All Ruined. A short meditation on one of my favorite films, Time Bandits (1981) before a remake arrives. I have many movies that I enjoy, but this is a movie that formed a big part of my worldview when I saw it for the first time as an 11 year old.
The Constant Contact Episode: Why People Write In, Repeats, Questions, Meaning, Culture, Context, Contact, Response, Arms Open Wide. Just some thoughts on how many times I find myself brought into conversations where anyone mentions anything about materials that might need a home. It's probably impossible to filter and tune awareness of when I should be brought in, but I thought I'd try.
The Modern Medicine Episode: Feeling Unwell, Emergency Drive, Portable X-Ray, The App, The Doctors, The Information, The Sense of Well-Being In Mystery, Four Figures. A small visit to the emergency room reminds me how much more amazing medical experiences can be now, even if they cost you.
The Atari Font Episode: Atari Microcomputers, Dark Rooms, Curtains and Shades, Customizing Fonts, Creating Games, Unfulfilled Goals, Unfinished Plans, Rescue from Darkness, The Real Reason for Atari Fonts, A River of Nostalgia and Memory. Some thoughts on my love of Atari and specifically, why I thought escape came in the form of Atari Customized Fonts. If you suddenly feel you need truetype versions of Atari Fonts, here's a great selection of them: https://github.com/a8bit/EightBit-Atari-Fonts
The Nostalgic Web Episode: Ingestion Thoughts, Early Web, Something Lost, Wandering Through Memories, The Early Web, The Lost Form, Expensive and Exclusive, BBS Versus Web, Reality, Mirroring Ourselves, An Evolution. A rumination on the early Web and what that even means to me, looking back, along with the folly of trying to put myself in the mindset of the way things worked back then. As a bonus, a recognition of just how exclusive it all was. To me, the two peaks of the early web will be SUCK and CAMWORLD. You can see them (sort of) at the Wayback machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20000302182418/http://www.suck.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000905161549/http://www.camworld.com/ You probably have your own.
The Deep Image Analysis Episode: The Fun Toy, The Advancements, Apple II Crack Screens, Transcriptions, A Held Out Hand, The Dark Cloud, A Lifetime of Scanning, The Advantages, The Wishful Thinking, A Critical Thinking Requirement. Thoughts on deep image analysis, which I've been experimenting with and which has been producing amazing results, but is anything amazing anymore without concerns following soon behind?
The Hacking Museum Episode: Friends Bringing Up A Museum, What Is a Museum, What Is Hacking, How Do You Start, The Fundamentals, The Extras, Before You Hire a Staff, Hacking Stories and Lore, Mobile or Static, The Possible Real Hacking Museum. Some pals of mine were talking with me about a hacking museum, and this was something that I was supposed to write a big document about, like an assessment, but maybe a podcast episode is all it needs to be.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
