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Jason Scott Sadofsky (born September 13, 1970) is an American archivist, historian of technology, filmmaker, performer, and actor. Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms Sketch, SketchCow, Sketch The Cow, The Slipped Disk,[1] and textfiles. He has been called "the figurehead of the digital archiving world".[2]

Key Information

Scott 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,[3] and a 2010 documentary film about interactive fiction, GET LAMP.[4][5]

Scott lives in New York state. He was the co-owner of the late Twitter celebrity cat Sockington. He works for the Internet Archive and has given numerous presentations at technology related conferences on the topics of digital history, software, and website preservation.[citation needed]

Early life

[edit]

Jason Scott Sadofsky[6] 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).[7] He later graduated from Emerson College in 1992 with a film degree.[8] 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.[citation needed]

Career

[edit]

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.[9]

In 1990, Scott co-created TinyTIM, a popular MUSH that he ran for ten years.[10] 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,[11] 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.[12]

In 2006, Scott announced that he was starting a documentary on video arcades, titled ARCADE.[13] Although he did not complete the project, all of the footage he shot for ARCADE has been made available on the Internet Archive.[14][15]

In 2007, he co-founded Blockparty, a North American demoparty.[16] 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,"[17][18] a group dedicated to preserving the historical record of websites that close down.[19] Responding[20] to the announcement by AOL of the closure of AOL Hometown, the team announced[21] plans to save[22] Podango and GeoCities.[citation needed]

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.[23]

In early 2011, he was involved in Yahoo! Video and Google Video archive projects.[24][25][26]

Scott announced the creation of Archive Corps, a volunteer effort to preserve physical archives, in 2015.[27][28]

Scott has been hosting his own podcast called Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It since 2017.[29]

Scott is the software curator at the Internet Archive.[30] In April 2019, he uploaded all of the source code for Infocom's text-based adventure games and interactive fiction, including Zork and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, to GitHub.[31][32]

Sockington

[edit]
Main article: Sockington
Scott's cat, Sockington

Sockington was a domestic cat who lived in Waltham, Massachusetts. He gained large-scale fame via the social networking site Twitter. Scott regularly posted from Sockington's Twitter account from late 2007.[33] As of January 2018, Sockington's account has over 1.4 million followers, many of which are pet accounts themselves.[33][34] Sockington died on July 18, 2022.[35]

Acting

[edit]

Scott is a frequent collaborator of Johannes Grenzfurthner and appeared as an actor in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf: Sector 2 (2009), Glossary of Broken Dreams (2018), and the science fiction comedy Je Suis Auto (2019).[citation needed]

Personal life

[edit]

Divorced,[6] Scott was engaged as of 2017.[36]

Filmography

[edit]

Citations

[edit]
  1. ^ Scott, Jason (July 31, 2010). "DEF CON 18 - Jason Scott - You're Stealing It Wrong! 30 Years of Inter-Pirate Battles". YouTube. Event occurs at 35:24. Archived from the original on March 24, 2023. A long time ago, I was The Slipped Disk.
  2. ^ "Jason Scott: Past (Digital) Lives". FM4. ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Network). Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  3. ^ "BBS: The Documentary". Bbsdocumentary.com. Archived from the original on January 6, 2012. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  4. ^ Gagne, Ken (July 26, 2010). "The Grill: Jason Scott". Computerworld. IDG. Archived from the original on November 23, 2017. Retrieved August 8, 2010.
  5. ^ Get Lamp
  6. ^ a b Schwartz, Matt; Talmadge, Eva (December 20, 2011). "Fire in the Library". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
  7. ^ "Issue #1 of Esnesnon". 1987. Retrieved January 13, 2012.
  8. ^ "BBS: A Documentary: The Pitch".
  9. ^ "The Life and Times of Jason Scott". Cow.net. September 13, 1970. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  10. ^ "ASCII by Jason Scott / About Jason Scott". ascii.textfiles.com. December 11, 2008. Retrieved January 18, 2012.
  11. ^ "Jason Works for a Living". Cow.net. Archived from the original on July 17, 2012. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  12. ^ "T E X T F I L E S". Audio.textfiles.com. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  13. ^ "Arcade: A Documentary". Arcadedocumentary.com. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  14. ^ "Update 56: End. · The Jason Scott Documentary Three Pack". Kickstarter. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  15. ^ "ARCADE Documentary Footage and Interview Archives : Free Movies : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive". archive.org. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  16. ^ Blockparty
  17. ^ "archiveteam.org". archiveteam.org. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  18. ^ Herrman, John (November 29, 2018). "It's Almost 2019. Do You Know Where Your Photos Are?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  19. ^ Schwartz, Matt. "Fire in the Library". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  20. ^ "ASCII by Jason Scott / Eviction, or the Coming Datapocalypse". Ascii.textfiles.com. December 21, 2008. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  21. ^ "ASCII by Jason Scott / Datapocalypso!". Ascii.textfiles.com. January 18, 2009. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  22. ^ "ASCII by Jason Scott / Geocities: Why Hello, Everybody". Ascii.textfiles.com. August 18, 2011. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  23. ^ "The Jason Scott Sabbatical". Kickstarter. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
  24. ^ "Archive Team Is Trying To Download Google Video Before It Shuts Down". Laughing Squid. April 18, 2011. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  25. ^ "Yahoo! Video - Archiveteam". www.archiveteam.org. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  26. ^ "Google Video - Archiveteam". www.archiveteam.org. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  27. ^ "Archive Corps, A Volunteer Collective To Help Quickly Save Physical Archives Before They Are Lost". Laughing Squid. August 24, 2015. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  28. ^ "Welcome to Archive Corps!". www.archivecorps.org. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  29. ^ "Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It : Free Audio : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive". archive.org. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
  30. ^ "Download & Streaming : The Internet Archive Software Collection : Internet Archive". archive.org. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  31. ^ "historicalsource - Overview". GitHub. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  32. ^ Carpenter, Nicole; Maiberg, Emanuel (April 18, 2019). "Long Lost 'Zork' Source Code Uploaded to GitHub, But Few People Understand It". Motherboard. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  33. ^ a b "Twitter followers paw over feline". TODAY. Archived from the original on July 9, 2009. Retrieved August 18, 2009.
  34. ^ "Twitter forcing a strategy switch for businesses". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved August 18, 2009.
  35. ^ Jason Scott [@textfiles] (July 18, 2022). "I'm sorry to report that @sockington had a downturn in health and is no longer with us. He was cared for every day of his dumb little life to the top standards of a celebrity cat and after 18 long years, he saw something really shiny in the clouds and decided to chase after it" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  36. ^ Koebler, Jason (May 3, 2017). "Jason Scott Is Archiving CD-ROMs and Floppy Discs From Closets Around the World". Vice Motherboard. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
  37. ^ Chan, Casey (August 9, 2013). "DEFCON: A Documentary About the World's Largest Hacking Conference". Gizmodo. Retrieved May 12, 2018.

General references

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Jason Scott

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
Jason Scott Sadofsky (born September 13, 1970) is an American archivist, technology historian, filmmaker, and digital preservation advocate, renowned for his efforts to document and preserve early internet and computing culture through projects like the website textfiles.com and documentaries such as BBS: The Documentary. Born in New York State and raised in the region, Scott developed an early interest in computing, acquiring his first modem—a 300-baud acoustic coupler—and computer, a Commodore PET, during his youth, and becoming a sysop for a local bulletin board system (BBS) called The Works BBS in Westchester County. He earned a film degree from Emerson College in 1992, after which he worked in various roles, including as a temp worker, in the video game industry at companies like Psygnosis and Focus Studios, and as a UNIX system administrator. In 1998, Scott founded textfiles.com, a comprehensive archive hosting over a terabyte of materials from the BBS era, including text files, software, and artifacts of pre-web digital communication that he had collected since the . This project evolved into a cornerstone of preservation, reflecting his passion for safeguarding from the dawn of personal and communities. Scott's filmmaking career gained prominence with BBS: The Documentary (2005), a 5.5-hour, three-DVD series featuring over 200 interviews and 250 hours of footage, which chronicles the social and technical impact of BBSes through the and 1990s; the project required three years of production and 25,000 miles of travel. He followed this with Get Lamp (2010), a documentary exploring text adventure games and , and directed other works like : The Documentary (2013). Since 2011, Scott has served as an archivist at the , where he oversees large-scale digitization efforts, including the ingestion of software collections, metadata management, and emulation projects that have made over 250,000 software items playable in web browsers. His contributions there include curating the Manuals Plus Collection, comprising tens of thousands of digitized technical manuals, and processing unique audio archives like the Bob Lardine Tapes, a set of 57 celebrity interviews from the 1960s to . Scott also hosts the Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It, launched in , which has produced over 300 episodes on topics ranging from retrocomputing to archival challenges, initially funded through to address personal financial difficulties. Through these endeavors, he remains a vocal advocate for , emphasizing the urgency of saving cultural artifacts in an era of rapid technological obsolescence.

Early life and education

Early years

Jason Scott Sadofsky was born on September 13, 1970, in New York to parents who initially got along but later divorced. He spent much of his childhood in Putnam and Westchester Counties in New York, along with time in towns near , , though specific family influences on his developing interests in technology or media are not detailed in available accounts. Sadofsky attended in , where he graduated in 1988. He co-founded the humor magazine Esnesnon—a name derived from "" spelled backwards—with friends John and Alex. The magazine, with its first issue produced in 1987, showcased his early and satirical bent. From a young age, Sadofsky exhibited interests in computers, writing, and that foreshadowed his later pursuits. He acquired his first computer, a , and a 300-baud modem during his youth, and served as the for a local BBS called The Works BBS in Westchester County. He began collecting textfiles from dial-up systems (BBSes) in his youth, immersing himself in early digital communities and textual creativity. These experiences, combined with his high school endeavors in humorous writing and pseudonymous contributions, nurtured a foundation in media experimentation and performative expression.

Academic background

Jason Scott attended in , , graduating in 1992 with a in Mass Communications, concentrating in . His coursework emphasized media production, including film techniques, visual , and fundamentals, which provided him with essential skills in creative and technical aspects of media creation. During his time at Emerson, Scott engaged in practical media activities, particularly through the college's radio station, WERS 88.9 FM. He participated in programming, including extended shifts and live music events, gaining hands-on experience in audio production and on-air . Scott's early filmmaking projects at Emerson included animating the visuals for Conspiracy Rock, a satirical song and video debuted in 1992 as part of a live show by the student comedy troupe This Is Pathetic. This student production demonstrated his emerging proficiency in and integration, marking an initial foray into collaborative media work.

Professional career

Digital archiving and preservation

Jason Scott established textfiles.com in the late as a comprehensive digital archive dedicated to preserving text files from the (BBS) era and early communications, collecting thousands of documents that capture the cultural and technical artifacts of pre-web online communities from the 1980s and . This repository serves as a foundational resource for researchers studying early , hosting files such as , phreak/hack literature, and that might otherwise have been lost to hardware degradation or neglect. By curating and making these materials publicly accessible, Scott emphasized the importance of maintaining raw, unfiltered records of in an era before centralized web platforms dominated information sharing. In January 2009, Scott founded , a decentralized volunteer collective aimed at rescuing endangered online data through crowdsourced scraping and mirroring efforts, with its inaugural project focused on archiving —a pioneering announced for shutdown by Yahoo. The team successfully downloaded and preserved approximately 900 GB of user-created webpages, files, and multimedia from GeoCities before its July 2009 closure, releasing the collection as a public torrent to ensure long-term accessibility. Over the years, Archive Team expanded to target other at-risk platforms, including and Yahoo Video, employing tools like custom scripts and distributed networks to capture terabytes of content, thereby countering the of corporate-hosted digital spaces. Scott joined the in 2011 as a free-range and software , where he has directed the acquisition, emulation, and metadata of vast software collections, enabling playable access to historical artifacts via browser-based emulators. In this capacity, he spearheaded the emulation of over 250,000 software items by 2023, including titles for platforms like the , Commodore 64, and early PCs, facilitating research and public engagement with vintage digital media. A notable contribution came in April 2019, when Scott uploaded the complete for Infocom's games—written in ZIL and ZAP languages—to GitHub repositories under the historicalsource organization, preserving the underlying code for classics like Zork I and Deadline that had long been inaccessible due to proprietary restrictions. His work at the has also extended to audio preservation, including collaborations on digitizing sound effects libraries and supporting initiatives to archive podcasts, such as early 2000s efforts to collect and upload thousands of episodes to prevent loss from discontinued hosting services. Scott has actively advocated for digital preservation through speaking engagements at major conferences, beginning with his debut at DEF CON in 1999 and continuing with regular presentations on archival techniques and challenges. At DEF CON 19 in 2011, he delivered a on Archive Team's "distributed preservation of service attack" methodology, detailing strategies for rapid data rescue operations. These talks, spanning events like Personal Digital Archiving and Digital Preservation conferences, have influenced community-driven efforts by sharing practical tools for emulation, metadata standards, and ethical up to 2025. Through these contributions, Scott's archival work intersects with his broader explorations of technology history in formats, underscoring the urgency of preserving interactive and narrative digital experiences.

Documentary filmmaking

Jason Scott's entry into documentary filmmaking centered on preserving the oral histories of early digital technologies through in-depth interviews and archival material. His debut project, BBS: The Documentary, an eight-episode released in 2005, examines the rise and fall of systems (BBSes) over 25 years, from their origins in the late to their decline with the advent of the . Begun in 2001, the film totals over five hours and incorporates over 200 interviews with participants, including system operators, users, and software developers, to capture the personal and technical stories behind this pre-internet communication phenomenon. Scott handled writing, directing, and editing, drawing on his personal collection of BBS artifacts to authenticate the narrative. Building on this foundation, Scott's second major work, GET LAMP, released in 2010, delves into the history of and text adventure games, a genre pioneered in the 1970s with titles like and popularized by companies such as . Filmed from 2006 to 2009, the 77-minute documentary features over 80 interviews with game designers, programmers, players, and academics, exploring the creative and technical challenges of narrative-driven computing without graphics. Production was aided by a 2009 campaign titled "The Jason Scott Sabbatical," which raised funds to provide Scott dedicated time for editing and post-production. Like BBS: The Documentary, GET LAMP was distributed via the , ensuring to its content and supplementary materials such as raw interview footage. Scott's filmmaking approach consistently prioritizes extensive fieldwork, including travel for on-location interviews and integration of vintage software demonstrations to evoke the era's user experience. In 2013, he expanded this style with DEFCON: The Documentary, a 110-minute film marking the 20th anniversary of the DEF CON hacking conference, which includes interviews with attendees, organizers, and security experts alongside live event footage captured by multiple camera crews. This project, commissioned by conference organizers, highlights the intersection of technology, culture, and cybersecurity, further tying into Scott's archival efforts by archiving raw video assets for public preservation. His documentaries, informed by his broader digital preservation work, emphasize storytelling that documents ephemeral aspects of computing history through firsthand accounts rather than scripted reenactments.

Online media and public engagement

In 2007, Jason Scott co-founded Blockparty, a North American demoparty that paired with existing events like Notacon to build community around computer-generated art, demos, and retrocomputing culture. This initiative served as an early experiment in fostering online-inspired gatherings, emphasizing creative sharing and networking among enthusiasts. Scott expanded his public presence in 2017 with the launch of his Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It, a series blending technology history, retrocomputing tales, documentary insights, and personal anecdotes to engage listeners on digital culture's evolution. The podcast, hosted on platforms like Libsyn, has produced over 300 episodes by 2025, maintaining a conversational style that draws from Scott's decades of experience in archiving and storytelling. A hallmark of Scott's online engagement is the Twitter account @sockington, which he created in late 2007 to post humorous updates from the perspective of his grey-and-white , Sockington. Scott managed the account, often collaborating with his then-wife to craft tweets mimicking feline observations, leading to viral phenomena like the "Socks Army" of pet-follower accounts. By 2018, @sockington had amassed approximately 1.4 million followers, establishing it as one of the earliest and most influential nonhuman personalities and influencing the rise of pet-centric . Sockington died on July 18, 2022, after 18 years, prompting widespread tributes that underscored its lasting impact on online communities. Through his blog ASCII by Jason Scott, Scott sustains public discourse on computing history and events, posting reflections such as his experience attending the INIT HELLO Apple II convention near in July 2025, where he documented sessions and emphasized the value of vintage tech gatherings. This platform complements his broader online persona as @textfiles across social media, where he promotes archival projects, shares trivia, and interacts with followers to advance awareness of digital preservation.

Acting and performances

Jason Scott has ventured into acting primarily through collaborations in independent cinema, often intersecting with themes from and in the indie and tech-adjacent scenes. His performances are characterized by a , authoritative delivery informed by his background in , lending authenticity to roles that critique or explore modern societal issues. These appearances are typically in low-budget, experimental films rather than mainstream productions. Scott's acting debut came in the 2009 mockumentary video game film Soviet Unterzoegersdorf: Sector 2, directed by , where he portrayed the eccentric character Oberzögersdorf White Trash. In this satirical project produced by the Austrian art collective , Scott's role contributed to the film's absurd parody of Soviet bureaucracy and retro-futurism, blending live-action with interactive elements and featuring cameos from tech figures like . He reprised his collaboration with Grenzfurthner in the 2018 essayistic feature Glossary of Broken Dreams, playing Billy Bob Turingengine, a fictionalized tech enthusiast. Scott's in this ideotaining —mixing lectures, sketches, and animations to dissect concepts like and resistance—added a layer of wry commentary on digital culture, enhancing the film's blend of humor and political critique. In 2021, Scott appeared as Sadofsky, M.D., in the experimental sci-fi horror Masking Threshold, again directed by Grenzfurthner, where his brief but pivotal role as a doctor amplified the film's themes of auditory and technological alienation through a clinical, detached demeanor. Most recently, in the 2024 farcical comedy Je Suis Auto, directed by Juliana Neuhuber and written by Grenzfurthner, Scott embodied Moses Moranis, a supporting character in a narrative involving a and a mafioso. His distinctive, rapid-fire delivery style—rooted in his experience as a public speaker on tech history—bolstered the film's satirical tone, poking fun at , labor politics, and corporate absurdity in the tech industry.

Personal life

Family and relationships

Jason Scott Sadofsky, known professionally as Jason Scott, is divorced. His parents divorced when he was very young, an experience that instilled in him a profound of impermanence and influenced his commitment to . As of 2017, Scott was engaged, having suffered a heart attack earlier that year while vacationing with his fiancée in . As of 2017, Scott had no children. Extended family has played a supportive role in his life; in 2011, he resided with his brother's family in .

Residence and later activities

Scott has resided in , since at least the early 2010s, maintaining a modest home in the upstate region that serves as his primary base. Outside his professional pursuits, Scott is an avid enthusiast, having co-owned several pets including the late Sockington and ongoing companion Pennycat, with whom he shares daily life. His involvement in extends to promoting and rescue efforts, leveraging personal experiences to encourage public engagement in supporting stray animals. In July 2022, Sockington passed away at age 18 following a health decline, prompting Scott to reflect publicly on the devoted care he provided throughout the 's life, describing it as a "dumb little life" filled with affection. Post-2022, Scott has focused on personal organization, including consolidating possessions and planning for future transitions to minimize complications for loved ones.

Major works

Filmography

Jason Scott's filmography encompasses his work as a director, , and , primarily in documentaries exploring digital culture and technology history, alongside select roles in independent films. His directorial efforts often highlight niche aspects of and gaming, connecting to his broader archival interests in preserving digital heritage.

Directed Documentaries

YearTitleRuntimeKey CrewNotes
2005BBS: The Documentary298 minutes (8 episodes)Director, Writer, Editor: Jason Scott Sadofsky; : Nicole SparksAn eight-part miniseries chronicling the history of Systems (BBS), filmed as a one-man operation by Scott over 25,000 miles of travel.
2010GET LAMP78 minutesDirector, Editor: Jason Scott Sadofsky; Interviews with over 50 contributors including game designers and historiansA feature on and text adventures, including bonus material like a 50-minute segment on ; released on DVD with 4,000 custom coins.
2013DEFCON: The Documentary110 minutesDirector, Editor: Jason Scott Sadofsky; : Rachel Lovinger; : Zoë Blade; : Eddie Codel, Alex Buie, Drew Wallner, and three othersA feature film on the hacking conference, shot over 2012 with a crew of six, covering its 20-year history.

Acting Credits

  • Soviet Unterzoegersdorf: Sector 2 (2009): Guest appearance as himself in this Austrian film directed by , focusing on a fictional communist enclave.
  • Glossary of Broken Dreams (2018): Role as Billy Bob Turingengine in this Austrian by , an "ideotaining cinematic revue" on language and failed utopias featuring multiple performers.
  • Je Suis Auto (2024): Role as Moses Moranis, a character (for which Scott shaved his head), in this Austrian directed by Juliana Neuhuber and produced by , exploring ontological themes through a mafioso's journey.

Archival projects and publications

Jason Scott founded textfiles.com in 1998 as a comprehensive digital archive dedicated to preserving materials from the bulletin board system (BBS) era of the 1980s and 1990s. The site hosts over 100,000 text files, including phreak and hacker documents, ANSI art, literature, software documentation, and ephemeral online creations that defined early digital culture. Its scope encompasses user-generated content from pre-web internet communities, making rare artifacts freely accessible to researchers and enthusiasts worldwide through a searchable web interface, with many files mirrored at the Internet Archive for long-term preservation. As a leader of , a volunteer he co-founded in , Scott has spearheaded numerous web preservation efforts to rescue at-risk digital content before platform shutdowns. Key projects include the rescue in , where the team downloaded approximately 1 terabyte of user-generated websites—over 38 million pages—from Yahoo's service prior to its closure, ensuring this slice of early web history remains publicly available via the . In the 2020s, under Scott's guidance contributed to archiving initiatives, building on earlier efforts like the 2005–2006 Podsucker project that captured thousands of early feeds; these ongoing activities have expanded the Internet Archive's collection to millions of episodes, focusing on metadata enhancement and bulk ingestion to safeguard audio ephemera. Scott's publications and curatorial work emphasize technology history through essays, posts, and archival collections rather than traditional books. His weblog, ASCII by Jason Scott, features in-depth articles on , retrocomputing, and , such as explorations of BBS software evolution and the challenges of emulating historical systems. As Software Curator at the since 2011, he has overseen the growth of the organization's software library into the world's largest online repository of vintage programs, encompassing over 1.3 million items including BBS software, applications, and business tools, with dedicated collections like "The " highlighting commercial software from the 1980s–2000s. These efforts prioritize emulation and metadata to enable playable access, drawing from community donations and targeted acquisitions. Scott launched the podcast Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It in September 2017 as a platform for personal reflections on his archival work, initially motivated by a . By November 2025, the series has produced over 330 episodes, each 20–30 minutes long, covering themes such as retrocomputing adventures, documentary production insights, the ethics of , and historical tech anecdotes like the rise of CD-ROMs and internet shutdowns. Episodes often blend storytelling with practical archiving advice, fostering public engagement with preservation issues through platforms like and the .

Key Archival Projects

ProjectYearDescriptionImpact
textfiles.com1998–presentBBS-era repositoryPreserved 100,000+ digital artifacts from pre-web era, accessible globally.
GeoCities Rescue (Archive Team)2009Mass download of contentSaved over 38 million web pages, now hosted at for .
Podsucker / Podcast Archiving2005–2020sBulk capture of RSS feedsExpanded 's audio collection to millions of episodes, aiding media history studies.
Internet Archive Software Collections2011–presentCurated vintage software libraryWorld's largest repository with over 1.3 million items (as of 2025), emphasizing emulation for usability.

References

  1. https://ascii.textfiles.com/about
  2. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1926421/
  3. http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/director.html
  4. https://blog.archive.org/author/jasonscott/
  5. https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/date/2006/02
  6. https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/date/2006/07
  7. http://digitize.textfiles.com/items/1987-esnesnon/
  8. https://textfiles.libsyn.com/the-radio-radio-episode
  9. https://ascii.textfiles.com/
  10. https://thewebahead.net/guest/jason-scott
  11. https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3029
  12. https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/GeoCities
  13. https://longnow.org/talks/02015-scott/
  14. https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2012/02/jason-scott-rogue-archivist/
  15. https://blog.archive.org/2023/09/20/a-quarter-in-a-quarter-million-out-10-years-of-emulation-at-internet-archive/
  16. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-source-code-for-infocom-s-classic-text-adventures-is-now-on-github
  17. https://blog.archive.org/2023/05/20/crash-bark-boom-the-usc-sound-effects-library/
  18. https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/01/podcast-prowler-history-archiving-with-jason-scott-talks-his-way-out-of-it/
  19. https://infosec-conferences.com/hub/best-def-con-talks/
  20. https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3278
  21. https://anarchivism.org/w/Jason_Scott_Talks
  22. https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary
  23. http://getlamp.com/director.html
  24. https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5289
  25. http://www.getlamp.com/
  26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU
  27. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfiles/the-jason-scott-sabbatical
  28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ctQOmjQyYg
  29. https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3984
  30. https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1100
  31. https://demozoo.org/parties/666/
  32. https://ascii.textfiles.com/podcast
  33. https://textfiles.libsyn.com/
  34. https://people.com/pets/sockington-speaks-meet-the-feline-king-of-twitter/
  35. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna30868712
  36. https://www.facebook.com/iNatureLove/posts/pussy-cats-rocks-on-twitter-with-large-number-of-followerssockamillion-sockingto/279376032583968/
  37. https://www.petsradar.com/news/how-did-sockington-the-cat-die
  38. https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5774
  39. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2279285/fullcredits/
  40. https://monochrom.at/glossary/
  41. https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/12/20/188752/fire-in-the-library/
  42. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jason-scott-is-archiving-cd-roms-and-floppy-discs-from-closets-around-the-world/
  43. https://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/a-conversation-with-jason-scott/
  44. https://coveredincathair.com/taxonomy/term/104
  45. https://x.com/textfiles/status/1549175841082511361
  46. https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5483
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  51. https://av.tib.eu/media/38933
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  57. https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/GeoCities_Project
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  59. https://blog.archive.org/2014/02/14/new-software-collection-making-the-business-case/
  60. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jason-scott-talks-his-way-out-of-it/id1297187822
  61. https://archive.org/details/software
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