Jason Scott New Films

Chat about emulation and retro in general
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Iain
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Jason Scott New Films

Post by Iain »

The following is an email I received from Jason, who does great work preserving various digital media and probably best known for his "BBS Documentary", which while very American focused, is excellent.

He's hoping to do 3 new films, about the 6502, Tape and Arcade games and looking for financial support.
Hi, it's Jason Scott, founder of textfiles.com and, as I hope the letter makes clear,
guy behind a whole bunch of projects and items that may be of interest to some of the
folks getting this. I haven't really sent out something like this to such a wide group
of people, and I doubt it's happening again... but mostly, I wanted folks to be
aware of a few things that might interest them to know about.

You are probably getting this because we interacted over the BBS Documentary or the
GET LAMP Documentary, my multi-year efforts to capture the history of BBSes and
text adventures. If you knew about one or the other but not both, the websites are
at http://www.bbsdocumentary.com and http://www.getlamp.com - feel free to check
them out.

I am running a Kickstarter campaign, right now, to make three more documentaries at
once - on the 6502 chip, on arcades, and on the medium of tape. I'm seeking pledges
from folks to hit a goal for the budget. Details are at http://kck.st/jasonscott

Why do I need pledges for a budget, when I didn't need it before? Well, before, I
was working as a sysadmin at a large hosting company, for 10 years, and while I was
making a healthy salary, I was also spending a lot of the day doing things that were
just not very interesting to where my real heart was: computer history.

So I would like to let everyone know that I no longer work at that company, and since
earlier this year, I have the official title of Free-Range Archivist at the Internet
Archive (http://www.archive.org), where I am given free reign to bring in as much
historial items and history as I can - I'm also uploading as much of the raw
interview footage from the two documentaries as I can, as well as terabytes of other
such artifacts. It has been a wonderful fit, and it is going very well.

I am also providing support as an archivist to the Game Developers' Conference, a
long-standing game design and technology conference, and am helping them digitize
hundreds of hours of presentations that were otherwise lost and unavailable - all
of the footage will be going up for free on http://www.gdcvault.com over the next
few months.

My salary is a fraction of what it was - but my days are filled with happiness and
joy, as I bring this history to people full time. If you want to keep up with my
doings, you can find me at:

http://ascii.textfiles.com
http://www.twitter.com/textfiles

And you can always reach me at jason@textfiles.com.

Thanks for your time.
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