Paul Allen's Computer Museum to Be Auctioned(hackaday.com) |
Paul Allen's Computer Museum to Be Auctioned(hackaday.com) |
> Is the Living Computer Museum Dead?
https://www.pcjs.org/blog/2023/02/16/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34831880 (238 comments)
> At the time, Vulcan CEO Bill Hilf framed the closure both as an unavoidable consequence of COVID-19 and as a difficult decision that was actually in keeping with Paul Allen’s wishes – that how Paul wanted his money to be spent after he was gone was very different from when he was alive.
> Yet it’s almost impossible to square the idea that Paul Allen, after investing so much time, energy, and money in the Living Computer Museum and its people – not to mention his express hope that efforts like his would not be “lost to time” – would have also left instructions that could somehow be interpreted to justify completely shutting down LCM after his death.
It's hard for me to imagine building Museums and other cultural organizations during your lifetime with the expectation that it would be dismantled after your death.
If these really were his wishes, that's very disappointing.
https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattles-living-computers-muse...
> The estate previously teamed up with Christie’s for a November 2022 auction of 155 masterpieces from Allen’s extensive art collection. It was the world’s most successful single-owner fine art auction ever, raising a record $1.62 billion.
I'm sure they are expecting a huge payout here as well. Understandable but sad nonetheless.
MIT ended up with the K&E slide rule collection at one point. Apparently they've merged it with a recent donation and it may be on display at their new facility but it pretty much sat in storage for years as far as I'm aware.
Who has the space to store an antique mainframe?
Same thing happens in other markets, industrial grade 12 foot bed CNC lathes can be picked up for similar prices to small hobby machines. Great deal if you have a spare barn, 3 phase power and the logistics to move it. Not many do!
I really wish Paul set up endowments to continue his projects. I don’t know if he knew how his sister would handle his estate but it doesn’t seem like what he wanted.
One friend who toured Montechello recently said that there's so much emphasis on slavery that the house has been turned into a monument to the bad things that Thomas Jefferson did in his life. I'm not saying this is incorrect or bad. Only that I don't think this is how Thomas Jefferson imagined his house would be used after his death.
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40789179
Would love to see some of these go to a good home. Whether that's publicly available via someone on Youtube, or another museum.
Hopefully there is a provision for somebody to come along in advance and purchase the whole lot.
As is, where is, no warranties of any kind.
Ideally someone who has the wherewithal not to move it, can you imagine someone having that much financial ability and talent when it come to real estate too?
I always felt so disappointed when I had to pick up working surplus and move it straight to storage myself. There's so much real junk out there and it would be such a shame to let it become co-mingled.
Hopefully, bulk buyers will be able to make rescue bids after piecewise bids have been taken and totaled.
There's lots of individuals that could afford it, real billionaires and stuff, all it takes is the right stuff. The kind of guts most people just don't have, whether they are very well-heeled or not.
Regardless of how it's sold in the end, there will be some sum total dollar amount that it all amounts to.
And people will know whether Allen's work was respected well enough to be maintained as an intact collection representing a great man's life's work, or if it ended up dispersed in a way that is only fitting for things like Allen's great art collection. Art is a different kind of life's passion. Allen's long-term collection & preservation efforts are not as diminished when the less-interactive non-tech artworks are dispersed.
After the hammer comes down, people can then play armchair quarterback, to see which of their favorite billionaires can be rated as to whether or not people think they would have been able to afford keeping the museum going financially if they really wanted to.
Plus any high-rollers can be more or less compared to what percentage of their net worth some random (and not so random) youtubers are dedicating to preserving other rare milestone tech gear out of respect for other great technology pioneers.