Jason Scott Sadofsky

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Jason Scott Sadofsky

Jason Scott at ROFLCon II
Born (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 in Hopewell Junction, New York), more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist and historian of technology. He is the creator, owner and maintainer of textfiles.com, a web site which archives files from historic bulletin board systems. He is also the creator of a 2005 documentary film about BBSes, BBS: The Documentary,[1] and a 2010 documentary film about interactive fiction, GET LAMP.[2]

Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms "Sketch", "SketchCow" and "The Slipped Disk". He currently lives in Hopewell Junction, New York.

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).[3] He later earned a degree in Mass Communications (Concentration in Film) from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. 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, Jason 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.[4]

Projects

BBS Documentary DVD box cover

In 1990, along with John Anthony Rescigno (who was known by the pseudonym "Trout.Complex"), Sadofsky started TinyTIM, a popular MUSH. He resigned in 2000.[5] 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,[6] 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, then again in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005. 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.[7]

In 2006 he announced starting a documentary on Arcades, titled ARCADE, but it is currently on hold while GET LAMP is being worked on.[8]

In 2007, he co-founded Blockparty, a North American demoparty. 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",[9] a group dedicated to preserving the historical record of websites that close down. Responding[10] to the announcement by AOL of the closure of AOL Hometown, the team has also announced[11] plans to save[12] 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.[13]

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.

Filmography

Presentations

Jason Scott was hired by Internet Archive in 2011

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "BBS: The Documentary". Bbsdocumentary.com. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 
  2. ↑ Gagne, Ken (Jul 26, 2010). "The Grill: Jason Scott". Computerworld.com. Retrieved Aug 8, 2010. 
  3. ↑ "Issue #1 of Esnesnon". Retrieved 2012-01-13. 
  4. ↑ "The Life and Times of Jason Scott". Cow.net. 1970-09-13. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 
  5. ↑ "ASCII by Jason Scott / About Jason Scott". ascii.textfiles.com. Retrieved 2012-01-18. 
  6. ↑ "Jason Works for a Living". Cow.net. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 
  7. ↑ "T E X T F I L E S". Audio.textfiles.com. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 
  8. ↑ "Arcade: A Documentary". Arcadedocumentary.com. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 
  9. ↑ "archiveteam.org". archiveteam.org. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 
  10. ↑ "ASCII by Jason Scott / Eviction, or the Coming Datapocalypse". Ascii.textfiles.com. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 
  11. ↑ "ASCII by Jason Scott / Datapocalypso!". Ascii.textfiles.com. 2009-01-18. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 
  12. ↑ "ASCII by Jason Scott / Geocities: Why Hello, Everybody". Ascii.textfiles.com. 2011-08-18. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 
  13. ↑ "The Jason Scott Sabbatical". Kickstarter. Retrieved 2012-01-08. 

References

External links

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