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I'm not quite sure what your point is, but don't you think that there's enormous cultural value in places like the LCM that allow more people to experience that feeling of wonder for the first time? Just because that feeling wanes away after the first experience, doesn't mean that these places aren't very valuable to society.


I guess I didn't explain it well, sorry. I agree that LCM is very valuable to society. I think I accidentally conflated two separate points. My first point is that yes the memories made are a moment in time that the mind cannot articulate correctly in present time (hence nostalgia evoking feelings better than what reality was at the time) BUT and this is important, even if LCM goes away, the effort they did spent was not in vain because it created those moments for so many people.

OP stated that everything you do will eventually die at some point after you. I disagree because we don't know if the positive impact that LCM created on someone could have then translated into a positive impact that a person who experienced LCM passes onto their friends and family. That positive impact could then traverse downwards.

I had this same exact discussion with some guy manning the Atari 800 booth at a recent Vintage Computer Festival East event. He was showing off cool demos running on the computer and we talked about how after he dies he felt that no one will care about this computer equipment anymore. The love for this platform dies with him and his generation.

It got me thinking that this item was made for a certain era which consisted of certain cultural elements that existed not only in the country where the item was designed, but also whatever thinking that was prevalent in specific components like the CPU design, computer science advancement at the time, marketing, etc. In other words, the computer was made specifically for people living at that moment in time. There probably wasn't much thought put into how different future people would perceive it because you don't know what the future holds and at the point of sale those people don't exist and don't matter.

At the same time though the memories that the computer generated will not be lost forever. They could have impacted downstream events (eg. the children of person could have been motivated to go into tech thanks to the love that the computer generated for their parent who subsequently went into tech)


People will experience feelings of wonder in their own time.


That sounds like an argument against museums in general.




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