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The PC 2100 project is an initiative to maintain the New Media Museum’s Personal Computing Collection as a “living archive.” The main goal of this is to run the past 50 years of standard personal computing hardware and software until the year 2100 and beyond. This will include keeping over one hundred computers running hundreds of software packages.
There are a many challenges that will need to be addressed in order for this to be feasible, and those will only multiply over the coming decades as the hardware and software become increasingly unstable and obsolete. In reality, this project will mostly be an exercise in problem solving and cooperation.
One of the most immediate tasks will be to establish a network of experts and hobbyists that have the expertise to repair the systems today. They will be able to help document the body of expertise required to service the hardware and address failing software
The next task will be to create a social infrastructure to pass the expertise and documentation on to at least one generation of personal computing archivists.
Of course, a certain amount of financial resources will be required, so a sub-goal of this project will be to establish an endowment to maintain the archive over decades to come.
© New Media Museum created by M. E. Hopper
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