On the Closing of Living Computers: Museum+Labs
If you're wondering what this place was, it was a computer museum in Seattle: <a href="https://livingcomputers.org" rel="nofollow">https://livingcomputers.org</a><p>Unlike many other computer museums, the exhibited computers were almost all up and running, and volunteers and staff encouraged you to play around with them, even the IBM mainframes. You could even get remote access to the computers for telnet or ssh!<p>LCM's indefinite closure was announced not too long ago in the CoViD era, but fits with a longer pattern. Since the 2018 passing away of its creator, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, his sister and estate executor Jody Allen has been unwinding many of their diverse businesses and philanthropies for a more narrow focus, theoretically in line with his hope to give most of his wealth away after his death.<p>However, Allen's main business Vulcan (<a href="https://www.vulcan.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.vulcan.com</a> ) continues and remains locally famous as a commercial real estate developer and Amazon's main landlord in Seattle.