How YOU Could Use The Extraordinaries -- Post #8 -- The Computer History Museum

Computer History Museum

What They Do:

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley -- in Mountain view,the town home to Google, Inc. -- is the Computer History Museum which boasts an impressive collection of "artifacts and stories of the information age."  According to their website, they are the "largest international collections of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, ephemera, photographs, moving images, documents and software." 

How the Computer History Museum could "Be Extraordinary!"

A museum on the history of computers is a bit like commissioning a biography on your four year-old son.  Sure, lots has happened, but there is far more still to come.  What if we could take the preservation, archiving, and collection of stories and artifacts of the computer and make it a continuously growing and evolving project?  The Computer History Museum could tap into the power of the crowd through the Extraordinaries -- which is, needless to say, a tech-savvy group -- to have them help share stories and build the collective history of the computer.  Extraordinaries volunteers could snap photos of their unique computer memorabilia, share stories of their uses of their machines, and even add to existing information.  The Computer History Museum could host photos of all of their artifacts, which volunteers could then "tag" with keywords to make the images better indexible, or even provide historical summaries and facts about the artifacts themselves.  The Computer History Museum could utilize the Extraordinaries to exponentially grow their collection in both scope and scale.

Want to Learn More?

http://computerhistory.org

What do You Think?

Is this a project you would like to participate in through your mobile phone?  Do you have a great piece of computer history to share?  We'd love to hear your comments below!

---

Alex Budak is a recent graduate of UCLA and is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Public Policy at Georgetown University , with a focus on Technology and Social Entrepreneurship.  He is joining The Extraordinaries this summer as a Research Fellow. 

Comments

[Computer Technical Support]

An interesting and informative post. Thanks for sharing this blog.