Comment by forestrywat
7 days ago
We recently had a post highly upvoted here that collected bus tickets from an earlier era. It showed the unique moment in time where such fares were highly detailed, unique pieces of art. Ultimately destined to be single use and largely extremely pedestrian.
We've also seen a website that collects old paper restaurant placemats from across the ages. Literally disposable, zero value items that were made to be discarded by the thousands.
And yet, when someone has an interesting idea that ties them together, makes us recollect or think about our past in some novel way, these useless uncommon things suddenly become quite interesting.
A book on sermons, o its own, from the 1920s is maybe not that interesting. A book of sermons selected from each decade? A collection that compares regional books of sermons? A compare and contrast of the 2020s and 1920s? I can imagine many interesting thesis where a book like that becomes interesting because of the context of other books that are juxtaposed to it.
A book on Detroit motorways and bus schedules from the 30s isn't interesting or valuable on its own. But when you contextualize it, suddenly it might be a way to understand our history, our path through development and redevelopment. Connecting our present moment to the past.
Yes, I collected a couple decades of Muni fast passes too and finally gave them to an artist to destructively turn into some project. I was sad that my “rare” tickets probably won’t be kept forever, but I’m glad that somebody got some use out of it. I feel the same way about LLMs. I’m glad that they are learning from old published materials. In my opinion, 404media is cynically inciting anti-tech anger; they don’t otherwise have any interest in the preservation ecosystem.