The Changing Face of the History of Computing: The Role of Emulation in Protecting Our Digital Heritage David Anderson, Janet Delve, and Vaughan Powell Future Proof Computing Group, School of Creative Technologies, University of Portsmouth, UK
[email protected], {Janet.Delve,vaughan.powell}@port.ac.uk Abstract. It is becoming increasingly common for some source material to arrive on our desks after having been transferred to digital format, but little of the material on which we work was actually born digital. Anyone whose work is being done today is likely to leave behind very little that is not digital. Being digital changes everything. This article discusses the issues involved in the protection of digital objects. Keywords: digital preservation. Erasmus summarised well the outlook of many historians of computing when he remarked “When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes”! Most of us love second-hand bookshops, libraries and archives, their smell, their restful atmosphere, the ever-present promise of discovery, and the deep intoxication produced by having the accumulated knowledge of the world literally at our fingertips. Our research obliges us to spend many happy hours uncovering and studying old letters, notebooks, and other paper-based records. It is becoming increasingly common for some source material to arrive on our desks after having been transferred to digital format, but little of the material on which we work was actually born digital. Future historians of computing will have a very different experience. Doubtless they, like us, will continue to privilege primary sources over secondary, and perhaps written sources will still be preferred to other forms of historical record, but for the first time since the emergence of writing systems some 4,000 years ago, scholars will be increasingly unable to access directly historical material.