This post was part of a project that happened in 2017, the year that Alan Kay donated a Xerox Alto to YC. That was amazing but also challenging: what do you do with such a treasure? You can't just let it collect dust.
After sweating a bit, we found a perfect answer and I think it's still valid today. What you do with something as precious as an original Xerox Alto, is you find someone as good as kens to entrust it to.
Ken ended up pulling in a brilliant bunch of volunteers (loosely grouped around the Computer History Museum, IIRC), and they eventually got the Alto working. Not only that but they made an incredible series of videos and posts along the way, so the rest of us could follow along.
Once they'd gotten it working, we had a new challenge: what do you do with a working Alto? Again, the answer didn't take too long to figure out. What you do in such a case is you give it to the people who actually knew (and cared) enough to resuscitate it.
After sweating a bit, we found a perfect answer and I think it's still valid today. What you do with something as precious as an original Xerox Alto, is you find someone as good as kens to entrust it to.
Here's me describing the effort at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11930198.
Ken ended up pulling in a brilliant bunch of volunteers (loosely grouped around the Computer History Museum, IIRC), and they eventually got the Alto working. Not only that but they made an incredible series of videos and posts along the way, so the rest of us could follow along.
Once they'd gotten it working, we had a new challenge: what do you do with a working Alto? Again, the answer didn't take too long to figure out. What you do in such a case is you give it to the people who actually knew (and cared) enough to resuscitate it.