[ELECTRONIC BUZZING, STATIC] (SINGING) Oh wow, how amazing and interesting too But in this digital world, what can we do? What can we do? Hey, good question Well, it's up to you In the digital world, there's only three things to do Oh, wow, how amazing and interesting too But in this digital world, what can we do? [ELECTRONIC BUZZING, STATIC]
I'm going to tell everybody right away--
I left the broadcasting monitor on, so I thought that the thing was looping. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. So we've got a thumbs up from everybody. And the reason that we need a thumbs up is because we just hijacked the air studio, just stepped in and said, we're going to switch over from the production studio to the air studio, despite the fact that the computer's not working in here. Because we need the space for our talk show. So the chief engineer is coming in here.
It's crazy, but WREK engineers are the best. So they're helping us out a lot.
Yes, they are. And they're giving us a lot of support. Fred, you want me to start the show?
Please do.
You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks, the research-library rock-and-roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with a calamity and everybody else. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it.
And our show today is called a disaster-- no, it's not. It's not. The show today is called The Past in the Future. Hang on a second. Wasn't that the name of the show last week?
I know everything's screwed up, Fred, but don't worry.
OK.
Yeah. Yeah. And you're almost right. But last week, for our historical reading club, we looked at the future in the past. Today, we're talking about a research lab in the Georgia Tech Library, where you can explore how old technology affects our current lives. And that means we'll be talking about the past in the future.
That seems legit. OK, I'm going to start again. I need a whole reset on this whole day. OK. Our show today is called The Past in the Future. Deja vu. This is part 5 in our series, the Georgia Tech Library Guidebook.
On the first Friday of each month, we visit a site in the guidebook and talk about a space or service in the Georgia Tech Library.
Our space today isn't just a space, it's a service and a research concern. It's retroTECH. The retroTECH space is on the third floor of Crosland Tower, but its mission is everywhere and everywhen.
retroTECH is here to help Georgia Tech create the future by exploring and preserving our technological past.
Through retroTECH, we want to learn more about how our lives shape technology and how technology shapes our lives through our history.
And the vision of retroTECH is to inspire a culture of longterm thinking, ongoing access to technological heritage, peer-to-peer discovery, and individual empowerment. That's the best part.
And our songs today are about changes, technology, and looking forward and backward at the same time. retroTECH is all about helping us see how changes in technology help us look forward while we're looking back. It's like pushing in two directions on the timeline at once. So let's start with "Pushin Forward Back" by Temple of the Dog right here on Lost in the Stack.
Fred, Thank you so much for that.
[TEMPLE OF THE DOG, "PUSHIN FORWARD BACK"]
That was "Pushin Forward Back" by Temple of the Dog. This is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is called The Past in the Future. And it's all about retroTECH at the Georgia Tech Library. This is the fifth in our Georgia Tech Library Guidebook series. On the first Friday of each month, we visit a site from the guidebook featuring a space or service in the Georgia Tech Library.
CHARLIE BENNETT: And our guides today are past and future guests Dr. Dillon Henry and Cliff Landis from Archives and Special Collections at the Georgia Tech Library. Dillon is the digital-- and I got to say this word now on air-- the digital "a-session-ing" archivist. Accessioning.
Accessioning.
Accessioning. Thank you, everyone. And Cliff is the digital curation archivist. Welcome back to the show.
Glad to be here. Good to see you.
[LAUGHTER]
You're both a little shell-shocked by just how weird the studio is right now. And so are we, so that's OK.
Well, this is my first time being in the studio.
It's a wonderful introduction for you. So let's talk about retroTECH. This is the guidebook. We're on the third floor of the Crosland tower. We're walking into the retroTECH lab. What's in there?
Well, if you walk into the retroTECH lab, you will see an array of monitors and some tables. And then if you step in and look to the right, you will see a little alcove area with a number of old CRT televisions, video game consoles, vinyl record player. You'll see some old cameras on the shelves, some scientific instruments, laptops, other just vintage technology. You got some floppy disks up there, some zip disks, and all that good stuff.
So it sounds like the collection of equipment is the more important part than the array of computer screens.
Correct, yes.
You mentioned a lot of kinds of things. Do you have a favorite specific thing in the retroTECH collection that we can focus in on?
Oh, gosh, that is a really good question. Oh, there's so many to choose from. One thing-- oh, go ahead, Cliff.
Oh I was just going to say the math grenade I think is one of--
That's coming in.
--my favorite--
Yeah, yeah.
We're building up our collection of scientific historical equipment. And one of those is basically a calculator that techs had to take out into the field to do calculations very quickly before the modern calculator was invented. And so we've been building up our calculation and mathematics collection. And I think that's one of the coolest-looking things that we have.
I think you jumped over why it's called the math grenade.
Yeah, so it's handheld. It's like a large capsule with a little screw or a little twisty thing on the top that you use to perform the calculations. And you can lift it up and pull it down-- it's like the pin or something.
[LAUGHS] Wow.
And yeah.
I'm almost positive that William Gibson talked about a math grenade in Pattern Recognition.
He did. He absolutely did. And what's funny is-- because Cliff brought this up. And I had recently-- well, since I started working at Georgia Tech and we have this huge science fiction collection, I was reading a bunch of William Gibson. And I read that book, and there was a character talking about Curta calculators. And I didn't know what that was. So my brain just was like, oh, maybe that's a real thing, maybe not, whatever. It went in and out. And then two years later, I'm researching stuff.
I'm like, oh, this Curta calculator looks pretty cool. And then Cliff is like, hey, this is in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. And I read that, and I had no idea.
We have in the script that we should stop the segment right about now, but I'm not going to. Because we really need to dig into what you all just did, which is recognizing through a sort of experiential learning process the reality of a fiction, reality of a design past. Maybe I just said everything that needs to be said. But any thoughts on what I just dumped on you there?
I guess I'll say that something that I see when-- and we can get more into this after the break. But when students come in and they'll play-- I'll set up, like, an old Mario Kart for Super Nintendo or Nintendo 64. And it's like, oh, I've played a newer one. And I know that there's some precedent for this, but I never saw it or never really thought about it. And that's not quite the same thing, but it's like this existence of something that's almost mythical because it's before your time.
What was that feeling, Cliff, when you saw the real thing that you had only read about?
It's been very cool to come into the collections and see all of the material that is historical. Because Georgia Tech is very focused on the present, very focused on the future, and improving the human condition. So to have these touch points to our technological past and to be able to not just see but hold these things that are where all of our modern tech really comes from has been really cool.
It's a great way to connect students and anybody who visits to these intergenerational conversations around technology. You can't help but chat about, like, oh, when I was growing up, I played on the original NES system. Or I had an Amiga whatever--
Deep cut.
[LAUGHTER]
So that's been cool for me.
This is Lost in the Stacks. We'll be back with more of these deep cuts with Dillon Henry and Cliff Landis after a music set. File this set under BF637 dot C4 no dot S45.
[LAUGHTER]
[BILLY JOEL, "IT'S STILL ROCK AND ROLL TO ME"]
(SINGING) Everybody's talking about the new sound Funny, but it's still rock and roll to me
That was "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" by Billy Joel. And, yes, some of us were singing along in our heads. And before that, "Changer" by Andy Shauf. Song's about watching change happen, whether we like it or not.
[ROCK MUSIC]
This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called The past in the Future. It's another episode for our Georgia Tech Library Guidebook.
We're talking about the retroTECH lab, third floor of Crosland Tower. And our guides are Dr. Dillon Henry and Cliff Landis from the Archives and Special Collections Department. OK, so we got started on retroTECH. And the whole math grenade thing really set the tone. But what happens in the lab? Why are those things there? And what are you all doing with them?
Well, they're there so people can access them. I know that, as a former student for a long time myself, it can be kind of intimidating, going into a library or going into an archive. And so having this space with stuff set up where we can mediate people's interaction-- and especially with old technology that they might not be familiar with.
Like, they might not know how to change a console cartridge or even pushing a button to open the disk slot because they're used to just sliding something into a disk tray or whatever. So we're there so we can mediate this experience.
I feel like the definition of old technology here is not just something that was created a long time ago but also maybe is out of use a little bit has started to become less part of our everyday technology use.
Definitely. And that happens very quickly in the technological sphere. If you look at a Nintendo Entertainment System from the late '80s and then look at a PlayStation 5 or something like that and how many generations of video game consoles have been in between there, there's been such crazy leaps and bounds where something is obsolete within a matter of years.
And there's a lot of gaming stuff in there.
Correct. And part of that is because, well, it's important to preserve because it could be lost. The Software Preservation Network released a paper-- I believe it was two years ago or so, saying that 87% of games that they called retro, which they said was 2010 or earlier--
Come on.
[LAUGHTER]
Get out.
[LAUGHTER]
But 87% of those games are not available for purchase from their original rights holders, which poses a problem if we're talking about preservation and being able to have access to things. They say we lost 90% of films from the silent film era, and we're in danger of doing the same thing with games. And games are such an important part of culture.
And it's not just having the media that something is on. It's also having what can access that media.
Correct. I had a group of students, they scheduled an appointment and they came in because they were working on a game project. And one of the students wanted to recreate some sort of effect from one of the Final Fantasy games from the original PlayStation. And he had his team members come in because there's no replacement for the actual tactile sensation. You're putting in the disk. You're hearing it spin and load up. You're putting up the CRT.
And these graphics were designed with the CRT in mind, with the dithering that you would see on the screen. So if you see the graphics in HD, it looks bad, to put it one way, because that's not how they were designed. They were designed with the CRT in mind. So there's just no replacement for the actual hardware in situ and using it yourself.
Some folks listening might not know what CRT actually is.
Cathode-ray tube-- it was the big glass screens that you would have for the original TVs that would come out, where an electron beam just goes across the screen really fast to create a picture in motion.
I just felt vertigo when you described the beam going across. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right. That's the flicker. So this not even the big, honking TV. It's the mid-range big, honking TV. Are you doing collection development on the equipment? Are you searching for stuff?
Yes, yeah, collection development on hardware and software. And I try to curate based on my own knowledge of not just video game history but also cultural history and memory, for instance. Before I took over the lab, I suggested a purchase for a Philips CD-i and a few games for it, such as Hotel Mario and a few Zelda games-- Wand of Gamelon. Is that what it was called? And the thing was--
Acting like you don't know.
--the console was a commercial failure. It was a total flop. It was an early attempt at using CDs for games. And what's notable is that Nintendo allowed other parties to create these Mario and these Zelda games that had cutscenes in them that were poorly animated, poorly voice acted. And with the advent of the YouTube era, people took these cutscenes and they made they edits-- some not suitable for work. And so you had this--
Due to copyright restrictions, right?
Oh, yes, of course. And so you had this console and these games that were not successful at their time or for their intended purpose but became part of the cultural zeitgeist in a new era and a new form-- so the way that a game can become kind of a cultural artifact, even if the game itself wasn't something particularly noteworthy.
I feel like you just summed up one of the research concerns of retroTECH all at once. You are listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we'll hear more about retroTECH, which I guess-- what-- 15 years ago? Come on-- on the left side of the hour.
[ROCK MUSIC]
All right. This is Mike Giarlo, the architect. My job is APIs, AIPs, and IPAs. You are listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta.
[ROCK MUSIC]
(SINGING) [INAUDIBLE]
Today's show is called The past in the Future. We're talking about the retroTECH lab in the Georgia Tech Library. One of the things that retroTECH always brings mind to me is the Long Now Foundation, an organization founded to promote longterm thinking, much like retroTECH is doing. One of its founding board members was the musician Brian Eno, who coined the term Long Now, along with a bunch of other stuff. Here's an excerpt from his essay The Big Here and the Long Now.
"Now is never just a moment. The long now is the recognition that the precise moment you're in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of now, the more past and future it includes. It's ironic that at the time when humankind is at a peak of its technical powers, able to create huge global changes that will echo down the centuries, most of our social systems seem geared to increasingly short nows.
We struggle to negotiate our way through an atmosphere of utopian promises and dystopian threats, a minefield studded with pots of treasure. We face a future where almost anything could happen. Will we be crippled by global warming, weapons proliferation, and species depletion, or liberated by space travel, world government, and molecule-sized computers? We don't even want to start thinking about it. This is our peculiar form of selfishness, a studied disregard of the future.
Our astonishing success as a technical civilization has led us to complacency, to expect that things will probably just keep getting better. But there is no reason to believe this. So we'll chew on that in the retroTECH lab. File this set under TK452.T65. [DAFT PUNK, "TECHNOLOGIC"] Buy it, use it, break it, fix it Trash it, change it, mail upgrade it Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it Snap it, work it, quick erase it Write it, cut it, paste it, save it, load it, check it
[FATIMA, "TECHNOLOGY"]
That was "Technology" by Fatima and, before that, "Technologic" by Daft Punk-- songs about the technology in our lives.
Oh, no bump.
So we just had a bump. Alex, go ahead and start the next segment.
Yeah, this is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is part of the Georgia Tech Library Guidebook. This episode is called The Past in the Future, and it's all about retroTECH.
We're speaking with Dillon Henry and Cliff Landis from the Georgia Tech Library's Archives and Special Collections. And two of the-- I'm not going to call you masterminds because that has a different tone these days. But you do the stuff that's in retroTECH, right? What are your plans? Why does retroTECH connect to what you do at the library?
Well, we're both digital archivists. I don't know if you want to take this. I've been hogging the mic. So if you want to--
Oh. Yeah, sure. I think the future of retroTECH hopefully will be tied a little bit closer to the instruction and research that happens here at the institute. We've been able to do some of these initial partnerships with folks across campus, which has been pretty awesome. But I think part of the challenge of any sort of retro technology is that we know that it's not going to last forever-- so trying to keep it alive as long as possible.
So one of the approaches to digital curation is something called encapsulation.
And that's where you try and take the technology that actually plays the media that you're trying to play and keep it all together and keep it all alive so that somebody can do-- like what Dillon's students were trying to do-- come in and have the experience of dealing with this technology hands on, seeing it with your own eyes, touching the keyboard or the controller, interacting with it as it was created to be interacted with.
But as time goes by, we're going to have to shift more towards emulation, because we're going to have to use newer technologies to provide a playback for some of the older stuff that is no longer accessible. So we have to take multiple approaches, trying to keep this stuff alive as long as possible.
Yeah. And part of that is if this stuff is designed to be used, which also kind of makes it unique in that-- typically, with archival material, it has to be very delicately handled. But the point is, we have stuff because the point is to play it. They're games. And using technology can lead to its non-use, especially when you have stuff that's old and finicky. And then how do you get-- like, if you have an Apple II and the floppy drive stops working? Not that that's a case that's currently--
[LAUGHTER]
Well, it's like, how do you-- you can't just go to an Apple store today and plop an Apple IIe on the counter and say, hey, fix this.
And is there a junkyard for computers? Can you go and rip a drive out of something somewhere?
[LAUGHS]
If you go on eBay, you will see a lot of old tech that is listed either as in working condition or not in working condition. So part of the challenge is that the people who know how to do repair are dying.
Wow.
The folks-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Not metaphorically? Not metaphorically-- literally. And we encounter this when it comes to even things like 8 millimeter film, any sort of older technology. The people who not only have the machines but know how to fix the machines when they break down, they might be trying to outsource to get something 3D printed in order to replace a component because nobody's manufacturing the parts to VHSes anymore, VHS tape decks.
So we're trying to keep it alive as long as humanly possible. But when we can't, we try to migrate it to a format that can live a little bit longer or, if it's an interactive tool, create some way to emulate it so that folks can still have that experience. But yes, we are sometimes buying stuff to cobble together a thing that works.
Yeah. You've mentioned emulation a couple times. Can you describe that with a little more detail? Because I think maybe-- certainly, I know a little bit about it. And some people might not know what that means at all, when you're talking about this software and these hardware.
Yeah. So emulation is where you're trying to emulate what the original experience is like. And so a lot of emulation has been supremely popular in retro gaming in particular. Because a lot of the computer geeks and programmers and coders who love games also love to figure out ways to keep these games playable so that they can continue to enjoy them.
Half the time I play Galaga, it's on a computer--
Right, exactly.
--that's attached to a joystick, not an actual machine.
Exactly, exactly. So we have our little time machine emulator in retroTECH that allows you to play old games from Amiga, NES, N64.
Well, and I'll add something as well-- is that with emulation, some of these retro games still have very thriving communities. For instance, a big part of my retro gaming experience was getting into Super Mario World ROM hacks. So you take Super Mario World, which was released, like, 35 years ago for the Super Nintendo. And what happens is--
Wait, wait. I should say, Cliff had a moment.
I did. I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
He was the melting emoji face.
35 years, jeez.
But what it is is people, they take the assets from the game and they make-- it's called kaizo from the Japanese word for rearranged-- and so kaizo Super Mario World hacks, where they try to make stuff as difficult as-- extremely difficult for humans to do, with all kinds of weird tricks.
And you really have to know in detail how some of the mechanics and some of the physics, including weird sprite spawning or advanced-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Dillon, you know you're starting to say things I don't understand at all, right? But the point being is that people today in 2025 these decades later are still using this base game in-- they're still creating and, in new ways, they're still interacting with this base game from that time.
So that's another way that people contemporarily are still interacting with this old technology in new ways.
It's not static. It actually can continue to change as long as people are interested in engaging with it.
I love a show like this where literally, every two minutes, we have another show idea just kind of drop into our laps. But we're out of time. So this is Lost in the Stacks. And today, we visited the retroTECH lab a little bit on the third floor of Crosland Tower for the GT Library Guidebook.
Our guests were doctor Dillon Henry, digital accessioning archivist, and Cliff Landis, digital curation archivist in the Archives and Special Collections Department of the Georgia Tech Library. Thanks to both of you for being on the show.
Thanks for having us.
Thanks for having us. And retroTECH tech is open Monday through Thursday.
Yep, 10:00 AM until noon. And whenever we have events like Charlie's Long Now lecture series and then there will be--
Coming up soon, coming fast.
--on March 13-- do I have that right? Yep, March 13 from 4:30 to 6:30 in retroTECH, third floor, Crosland tower, there will be Super Smash Brothers for the Nintendo 64 and Super Smash Brothers Melee for the GameCube.
I think I just figured out one of the ways you're going to keep this thing going, popular support. File this set under PS3572.05S6. [ROCK MUSIC] Could it be you're coming round
[GRAY MATTER, "RETROSPECT"]
That was "Retrospect" by Gray Matter. And before that, "Time Moves Slow" by BADBADNOTGOOD with Sam Herring. And before that, "Next Summer" by King Radon and the Noble Gases-- songs about time passing by and the new becoming old, or rather, retro.
[ROCK MUSIC]
CHARLIE BENNETT: [LAUGHS] I'm not laughing because Fred miscued the bump. I'm laughing at Fred's face after he miscued the bump. It was kind of beautiful. Today's show was called The Past in The Future, and it's like the retro in the now and the librarians in the studio. And we visited the retroTECH lab at the Georgia Tech Library. OK, for fun, get all loose-- let's end the show with a quick survey of everybody. I want to know what your favorite piece of retro technology is.
And you can define retro however you want. Mine, of course, is the Selectric in the display case down in science fiction, which I am thinking all the time about whether I can steal it or not. And I know I can't. I keep saying it so people will keep me accountable not stealing the Selectric. Fred, what about you?
It's a piece of retro technology that I currently still use, my clock radio alarm clock, which I still use to wake up in the morning.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah. Marlee?
I have a fond memory of the good old floppy disk drive that would just make that comforting whir, that you knew it was doing something, even if it was not doing the right thing. You knew was doing something. How about you, Cody?
I think mine's got to be the music series Now That's What I Call Music CD collection. Not only is an old piece of technology, the CD, but it speaks to the way people used to consume music-- a business model that makes no sense anymore. I remember cleaning out my aunt's house and we found Now That's What I Call Music 2. And I felt like I had found a piece of history. What about you, Alex?
That's a very solid answer. I am going to say the Edison phonograph that-- we do have one in our retroTECH lab. But I had first encountered one when I was working up at MIT. And it is just-- the honking horn, I just love it. It looks silly and retro. And how about you, Cliff?
I am going to go back to the beginning and say fire--
[LAUGHTER]
--one of the original technologies that has helped humanity progress as far as it has. What about you, Dillon?
If you'll indulge me, I have two. I have my basic answer, which I would say the PS2. I think that's just my favorite console, just excellent era for gaming. And then just soft, nostalgic answer is AOL dial-up, just the comforting screeching and just the [IMITATES DOOR CREAKING] door opening, you've got mail-- just the--
Awesome.
old, classic AOL dial-up.
I love all those answers, although I think fire was cheating.
[LAUGHTER]
Alex, go ahead and grab Cliff's mic so he doesn't say anything else. And with that, let's roll the credits.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between rack Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library. Written and produced by Alex McGee, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens.
Legal counsel and a nice, comfy gaming chair were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
It's incredibly comfortable. Special thanks to Cliff and Dillon for being on the show, to our old teammate Wendy Hagenmaier for launching retroTECH, and all our colleagues keeping it going. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Our web page is library.gatech.e du/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to tell us what your favorite retro technology is.
Next week, one of Georgia Tech's Britten Fellows talks about her research on the value of citizen science.
It's time for our last song today I think, the way things are going in the studio-- I don't know-- optimism. And to emphasize the point that the term retro is relative depending on one's perspective, as we've heard a lot today, let's close with a song from 2018--
Fred, I will drag you out of the studio.
--which is almost the most recent song on today's playlist. But according to my 17-year-old daughter, who is an obsessive K-pop music fan, this track is old.
OK, I withdraw my objection.
And so it's apt that the title of this track is "Retro". From Korea, this is retro by the k-pop legends SHINee right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend, everybody.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
Just a second, just a second.
Fred, you know the mics are still on, right?
Just a second.
[LAUGHTER]
This is possibly my favorite episode so far. [SHINEE, "RETRO"] Hey, yeah I don't know what it is but This girl got me feeling all emotional Let me tell you real quick
[SINGING IN KOREAN]