Jason Scott

Jason Scott
Scott in 2017
Born Jason Scott Sadofsky
(1970-09-13) September 13, 1970
Hopewell Junction, New York, USA
Nationality United States
Known for Archivist and historian of technology

Jason Scott Sadofsky (born September 13, 1970), more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist, historian of technology, filmmaker, performer, and actor. Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms Sketch, SketchCow, and The Slipped Disk.

He is the creator, owner and maintainer of textfiles.com, a web site which archives files from historic bulletin board systems. He is the creator of a 2005 documentary film about BBSes, BBS: The Documentary,[1] and a 2010 documentary film about interactive fiction, GET LAMP.[2][3]

Scott lives in Hopewell Junction, New York. He is the co-owner of twitter celebrity cat Sockington. He works for Internet Archive and has given numerous presentations at technology related conferences on the topics of digital history, software, and website preservation.

Education

Jason Scott graduated from Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York and served on the staff of the school newspaper under the title "Humor Staff". While in high school he produced the humor magazine Esnesnon ("nonsense" backwards).[4] He later graduated from Emerson College in 1992 with a film degree.[5] While at Emerson, he worked for the school humor magazine, school newspaper, WERS 88.9 FM radio, and served as art director on several dramatic plays.

Early work

After graduating from Emerson, Scott lived in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was employed as a temp worker while also drawing caricatures for pay on the streets of Cambridge.[6]

Projects

In 1990, along with John Anthony Rescigno (who was known by the pseudonym "Trout.Complex"), Scott started TinyTIM, a popular MUSH. He resigned in 2000.[7] In 1995, Jason joined the video game company Psygnosis as a technical support worker, before being hired by a video game startup, Focus Studios, as an art director. After Focus Studios' closure, Jason moved into UNIX administration,[8] where he remained until 2009.

He has been a speaker at DEF CON, an annual hacker conference, the first time at the 7th conference in 1999, and has spoken there almost every year since then. Scott also spoke at PhreakNIC 6 and 9, Rubi Cons 4 and 5, the 5th H.O.P.E. conference in 2004, Notacons 1, 2 (as a backup), 3 and 4, Toorcon 7, and beta premiered his documentary at the 7th annual Vintage Computer Festival. Most of his talks focus on the capturing of digital history or consist of narratives of stories relevant to his experiences online.[9]

In 2006 he announced starting a documentary on Arcades, titled ARCADE.[10]

In 2007, he co-founded Blockparty, a North American demoparty.[11] For their inaugural year, they paired up with Notacon which takes place annually in Cleveland, Ohio. This collaborative effort allowed the fledgling party to utilize the existing support structure of an established conference.

In January 2009, he formed "Archive Team",[12] a group dedicated to preserving the historical record of websites that close down. Responding[13] to the announcement by AOL of the closure of AOL Hometown, the team has also announced[14] plans to save[15] Podango and GeoCities.

In October 2009, he started raising funds for a year-long sabbatical from his job as a computer systems administrator, to pursue technology history and archival projects full-time. By November 2009, he had reached his funding goals, with the support of over 300 patrons.[16]

In early 2011, he was involved in Yahoo! Video and Google Video archive projects.

As of 2013 Jason Scott was also listed as the curator of the Software collections held by Internet Archive.

Sockington

Sockington is a domestic cat who lives in Waltham, Massachusetts. He has gained large-scale fame via the social networking site Twitter. Scott has been regularly posting from Sockington's Twitter account since late 2007.[17] As of January 2018, Sockington's account has over 1.4 million followers, many of which are pet accounts themselves.[17][18]

Acting

Scott is a frequent collaborator of Johannes Grenzfurthner and appeared as an actor in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf: Sector 2 (2009) and Glossary of Broken Dreams (2018).

Interviews

Scott is featured in the documentary Traceroute reflecting about his archiving work.

Filmography

  • BBS: The Documentary (2005) (director)
  • GET LAMP (2010) (director)
  • Going Cardboard (2012) (editor)
  • DEFCON: The Documentary (2013) (director)[19]
  • The 6502: A Documentary Series (TBD) (director)[20]
  • Arcade: A Documentary Series (TBD) (director)[21]
  • Tape: A Documentary With Bias (TBD) (director) [22]

Presentations

Scott in front of a PetaBox. Scott was hired by the Internet Archive in 2011.
Scott delivering a presentation at a Wikipedia conference in 2018.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "BBS: The Documentary". Bbsdocumentary.com. Archived from the original on January 6, 2012. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  2. ↑ Gagne, Ken (July 26, 2010). "The Grill: Jason Scott". Computerworld. IDG. Archived from the original on November 23, 2017. Retrieved August 8, 2010.
  3. ↑ Get Lamp
  4. ↑ "Issue #1 of Esnesnon". Retrieved January 13, 2012.
  5. ↑ http://bbsdocumentary.com/longpitch.html
  6. ↑ "The Life and Times of Jason Scott". Cow.net. September 13, 1970. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  7. ↑ "ASCII by Jason Scott / About Jason Scott". ascii.textfiles.com. Retrieved January 18, 2012.
  8. ↑ "Jason Works for a Living". Cow.net. Archived from the original on July 17, 2012. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  9. ↑ "T E X T F I L E S". Audio.textfiles.com. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  10. ↑ "Arcade: A Documentary". Arcadedocumentary.com. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  11. ↑ Blockparty
  12. ↑ "archiveteam.org". archiveteam.org. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  13. ↑ "ASCII by Jason Scott / Eviction, or the Coming Datapocalypse". Ascii.textfiles.com. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  14. ↑ "ASCII by Jason Scott / Datapocalypso!". Ascii.textfiles.com. January 18, 2009. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  15. ↑ "ASCII by Jason Scott / Geocities: Why Hello, Everybody". Ascii.textfiles.com. August 18, 2011. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  16. ↑ "The Jason Scott Sabbatical". Kickstarter. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  17. 1 2 "Twitter followers paw over feline". TODAY. Archived from the original on July 9, 2009. Retrieved August 18, 2009.
  18. ↑ "Twitter forcing a strategy switch for businesses". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2009-08-18.
  19. ↑ Chan, Casey. "DEFCON: A Documentary About the World's Largest Hacking Conference". Gizmodo. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
  20. ↑ Scott, Jason. "The 6502: A Documentary by Jason Scott". Archived from the original on January 17, 2015. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
  21. ↑ Scott, Jason. "ARCADE: A Documentary Series by Jason Scott". Retrieved 10 January 2015.
  22. ↑ Scott, Jason. "TAPE: A Documentary by Jason Scott". Archived from the original on January 1, 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
  23. ↑ "[HOPE X] Schedule". hope.net. Retrieved July 19, 2014.
  24. ↑ "Derbycon Schedule". irongeek.com. Retrieved September 26, 2014.

References

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