When people talk about technology and the internet, they like to talk about things that “never would have been possible before”. The examples are typically things like:

"You can tap a button and a car will come and pick you up and take you to a different location"

"Instead of driving to a store, you can make a few clicks, and something you ordered shows up to your door within a few hours”

"You can carry millions of songs in your pocket…"

I know a lot of effort goes in to these experiences and of course I think the infrastructure that enables them is impressive, but what excites me even more is the internet’s capability to preserve data, no matter how trivial, and enable access to that information for free* 😉. These kind of experiences make me grateful to live in this era, and keep me excited about technology in general.

Never Obsolete

For example, when I buy some old machine or "piece of junk" at a thrift store or off of eBay, I never worry about lack of documentation. In fact, it’s actually more impressive If I can’t find any info about that item.

For almost anything I’ve ever found, from tape recorders to clones of design award winning Yugoslavian telephones, documentation is just a text or image search away. Sometimes this will lead you to a generous corporate site that still archives instruction manuals for it’s long-discontinued products. Many times a third party site or a small community holds the scanned documents and specs of the item. Either way, it's always out there. As a result, these products get a second chance at life through the support of internet communities.

Shareware

I’m ashamed to admit that I’m not NOT a gamer. Long before I had a decent PC or a next-gen console, I had to explore my dad’s collection of long obsolete shareware disks from the 1990s. A lot of games on these disks were free for a reason. They were already old when the disks were given out at computer shows. That didn’t mean Doom, Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure, or Vinyl Goddess From Mars weren't timeless, but I quickly burnt through their truncated shareware versions, as publishers wanted you to order the rest of the game's “chapters” to continue. After all, that was part of the business model for shareware.

I could have made this story about the emergence of emulators and abandon-ware but that’s not what it’s about.

The amount of time spent in these archives forced me to dig through the folders, trying all sorts of games, and copies of games that are long forgotten.

But then I discovered Line Wars 2.

Line Wars 2 felt like the kind of game you hear about in an urban legend. The 3D graphics were strangely advanced for their time. The frame rate felt eerily smooth. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but the weapon sound effects felt complementary to the in-game music, as if it was actually a rhythm game and not a space shooter. I replayed levels to listen to the music and just vibe out to it.

So years later, when I started sampling other people’s music to make beats, I was set on finding game play footage from Line Wars 2. I did find it on youtube, but it just didn’t sound the same as when I played it a decade earlier.

Unhappy with sampling that audio, I searched a little more and found the ORIGINAL SONG FILES (!!!) by the artist "u4ia" on the original developer's web page. Like a lot of games from that time period, the songs were composed in a "tracker". Trackers were crucial in early digital music production as they allowed programmers with little musical knowledge (relatable) to create music for their games. Eventually these tools were packaged for consumers to create their own music and some still use them today.

Despite being decades old, I could download this file and play it in a modern tracker app on a Raspberry Pi. Furthermore I could convert this file to standard MIDI files and bring them in to my Digital Audio Workstation and choose my own digital instruments.

I can’t say that the song I ended up making was any good, but I still think about this experience and the journey that original file took from an Amiga somewhere in Europe to a wave form and out of my speakers.

Protecting the Library

I realize these experiences could be hard to relate to, and I don’t want to discount the importance of better user experiences or the use of tech to demystify previously complicated processes for users.

I just think it's amazing that through some existing web infrastructure, some standard protocols, a few products made by massive institutions, and a few programs made in home-offices, I could create something new out of something old.

In an age where success is often measured in convenience and individuals and communities can lose control of their data, I want to make sure that in the future, adequate resources are directed towards preserving our digital artifacts and enabling future web surfers to create their own art and enrich their lives on their terms.

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