% METHOD: Interview people about their histories with software

% REMEMBER: 

% WHAT: Collect personal narratives around software history. Retrace the path of an individual's relation to software, how it changed during the years, and what human access memories surround it. Look at software through personal relations and emotions.
% HOW: Interviews are a good way to do it, but informal conversations work, too.
% WHEN: Whenever (talking to people who are retired is a plus).
% WHO: Anyone with ten years or more of any kind of experience with software.
% URGENCY: High.
% NOTE: 

% WARNING: Oral histories will be lost if they are not recorded.


% http://gallery.constantvzw.org/index.php/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/PWFU3350
% http://gallery.constantvzw.org/index.php/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/PWFU3343
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% EXAMPLE: - 

**Jean Heuns has been collecting servers, calculators, softwares, magnetic tapes and hard disks for thirty years. He came to an agreement with the Department of Computer Sciences (KU::Leuven) for them to be displayed in the department hallways.**

% HYPHENATE: Com-put-er
% HYPHENATE: Sci-ences

% JH: _At the time computers were mainframes and you did feed them with programs by punch cards. Programming was writing down the program, then you punched it, and the next day you get results, mostly error. That's the way it worked at that time. To teach us programming, they used the language of that time, Fortran, and some kind of invented assembly langage, it didn't really exist, it was simplified._

% http://gallery.constantvzw.org/index.php/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/PWFU3304

% JH: _As an anecdocte, I remember punchcards were a block of paper, we were jealous of the people who came into the computer center with huge stacks of cards. They were really small programs, not complicated ones. In fact you had to learn to use the computer from scratch, everything was new, you couldn't rely on previous experiences. And to start with small programs was difficult enough._

% JH: _I remember the first program I had to work on. You got three numbers, you had to make the program decide if you can construct a triangle with the numbers being the sides of the triangle._

% PP: How did you see the rise of personal computer and the software that goes with it?

% JH: _I have to admit that we missed it. We didn't see that what was new was powerful. We were not impressed by the software. I remember Windows 95, the news on TV, people sleeping on the street to get it. I remember when I got my first Windows version, with a box of 22 floppies or so. Then I wanted to do something, to compile a program, but there was no compiler._

% JH: _For me software is the magic that makes computers usable._


% http://gallery.constantvzw.org/index.php/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/PWFU3361
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%!SHOW: tgsoimages.svg kuleuven1

% RELATESTO: 
% SOURCE: Quotes taken from an interview with Jan Huens, see following pages.