Episode 45 features Chris Webster, founder of DIGTECH, co-founder of the Archaeology Podcast Network, and a podcaster in his own right.
He’s here to discuss cultural resources management (which is another name for archaeology), the Indiana Jones myth, being a business owner, digital and physical stuff, and so much more.
During the episode we cover:
- DIGTECH vs INGEN
- Analytics of the Past
- Asking Questions
- What is Culture Resources Management (CRM)
- Shovelbums
- Archaeology is misunderstood
- CRM archaeology vs. Academic archaeology
- Running a business
- The moving pieces of history
- Digital archaeology
- Ready Player One / Ready Player Two
- Downsizing
- Archaeology Podcast Network
- And much more…
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.
–End Show Notes Transmission–
–Begin Transcription–
00:00:00:01 – 00:00:25:02
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent Palmer dot com. Coupland City of glass is the world’s best travel guide. Braff’s Garden State is much more than most give it credit for. And to be sure, Ethan has massive charisma and wisdom modifiers. Because I’m still thinking about things he said in that last episode. This is The Palmer Files episode 45 with Chris Webster, founder of DigTech, co-founder of the Archeology Podcast Network, and a podcaster in his own right.
00:00:25:06 – 00:01:10:17
Agent Palmer
He’s here to discuss cultural resources management, which is another name for archeology, the Indiana Jones myth. Being a business owner, digital and physical stuff and so much more. Are you ready? Let’s do the show.
00:01:10:22 – 00:01:47:37
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic. Also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 45th episode is Chris Webster. An archeological entrepreneur who founded Dig Tech, which is digital technologies and archeological consulting, co-founder of the Archeology Podcast Network. As well as being an actual archeologist, podcast engineer and, for good measure, pilot. Well, you are about to hear is part education as I learn exactly what an archeologist does in regards to cultural resource management and part discussion about stuff and its importance or relevance, both digitally and physically.
00:01:47:51 – 00:02:10:46
Agent Palmer
Like physically, the things you have or the things you keep. Plus, I genuinely enjoy getting to know the other half of the Archeology Podcast Network founders. So when you put this together with episode five featuring the other co-founder, Tristan, you get the full picture of who is in charge and how much they know and how much passion they have.
00:02:10:50 – 00:02:37:44
Agent Palmer
Before we get going, remember that if you want to discuss this episode as you listen or afterwards, you can tweet me at Agent Palmer, my guest Chris Webster at AKA Webby. That’s a r c h e o Webby dig tech, his company at DigTech LLC and the Archeology Podcast Network at Arch Pod Net. This show can be tweeted at The Palmer Files.
00:02:37:49 – 00:03:03:21
Agent Palmer
You can get all of Chris’s particulars at Dig Tech Dash Elle.com or Pro Podcast Now.com or Arc Pod cnet.com. The man has all the websites, all of which will lead you to Chris or Chris adjacent things. My writings and rantings and other adjacent things to me can be found on Agent palmer.com. An email can be sent to the Palmer Files at gmail.com.
00:03:03:26 – 00:03:13:35
Agent Palmer
So without further ado, let’s dig in.
00:03:13:39 – 00:03:43:35
Agent Palmer
Chris, your company, Dig Tech, has the tagline The Future of the past. And I have to tell you that it makes me think of a fictional company that ended up doing bad, with the tagline of we make the Future, which was Ingen from the Jurassic Park series. Now we make the Future was the book. The novel tagline I think we make your future was there were distinctions, right?
00:03:43:39 – 00:03:56:23
Agent Palmer
But every time I see your company come across my feed, I think of Ingen. Are you evil like?
00:03:56:27 – 00:04:12:35
Chris Webster
You know, I don’t think it’s up for the company to say whether or not they’re evil. I think it’s up for society to say whether or not you’re evil. And so far, nobody has told us, or told me, in particular, that I’m evil. So I’m going to go ahead and say, no, not yet. Okay.
00:04:12:37 – 00:04:27:15
Agent Palmer
I mean, look, it’s I don’t know, the future of the past seems very ingen to me. I think for me, you will always be tied in with that franchise. Now, I’m sorry.
00:04:27:19 – 00:04:40:19
Chris Webster
Well, and I can understand that. I can understand that. But I think they really were looking at the future. But we’re more concerned with the analytics of the past from a futuristic perspective. If that’s what it.
00:04:40:20 – 00:05:08:45
Agent Palmer
Does, it does. And I like that, you know, you’re a company, you’ve got five things on your home page, and I only bring it up because I love how succinct they all are, because a lot of companies are not. And I as a, as a guy who’s been looking for a job for way too long, I tend to dive in in, like, what is this company’s website really telling me?
00:05:08:50 – 00:05:25:41
Agent Palmer
And learn, do teach, create and make. It’s it’s as direct as you could possibly be. And I know there’s an evolution to it, but when you started, were these all the things you wanted to do?
00:05:25:46 – 00:05:53:36
Chris Webster
Oh, no. When I started, it was just for CRM archeology. I mean, I always had I always had the idea of doing more things and, and, and, you know, they were all things related somewhat to archeology for the most part. But it was it was different aspects of that. Right? So, I mean, I started the company first and then I started my blog that was based around, you know, doing archeology and things like that.
00:05:53:36 – 00:06:10:16
Chris Webster
So that went on there because you need a place to host it. And it seemed appropriate, started the podcasts, and then that went in there. And the APN used to actually be hosted right on that website and so. Well, my first podcast used to be hosted on that website until we kind of got too big for that. Then we put them on their own website.
00:06:10:16 – 00:06:29:09
Chris Webster
Now it’s just linked through their. And then there’s just always been other things that I’ve been interested in in that space because, you know, from day one, I always thought that, you know, you can teach a monkey to walk transects in a field. And sometimes there are monkeys just walking transects in a field. But you can teach just about anybody to do that.
00:06:29:09 – 00:06:46:25
Chris Webster
But when it comes down to the wider and the bigger picture and training and science communication and all the things I always do, that’s kind of where I wanted to go. So the website didn’t start that way, but it ended up that way, trying to emphasize not the things that I’m doing, but the concepts I’m more interested.
00:06:46:25 – 00:07:04:09
Agent Palmer
And like, were these concepts, with you always I mean, obviously everybody takes a journey. But like you, you know, when you first think about history, did you think about communicating history? You know, I.
00:07:04:09 – 00:07:22:16
Chris Webster
Mean, probably not. Right. I think I didn’t really come to the communication aspect of it through training, blogs, podcasts, whatever the case may be. Probably until honestly, it was my first job, my first year I’m job, and I was like, so what’s this? So what’s that? You know, I’m so green. I’m just like asking all these questions, right?
00:07:22:16 – 00:07:24:54
Chris Webster
I’ve never been one to shy away from asking questions.
00:07:24:59 – 00:07:42:58
Agent Palmer
And speaking of questions, you know, I would a CRM job for those who do not know, because I hear CRM and I go, well, like, customer relations, resource management or whatever, like, right. So are you talking about something?
00:07:43:00 – 00:08:05:11
Chris Webster
Yes. It yeah. So CRM actually has three meanings to me. There’s customer relations or resource management depending on who you’re talking to. I’m also a pilot. So it also means crew or cockpit resource management. And then but in the context of archeology, it means cultural resource management really means cultural resource management. I think that.
00:08:05:18 – 00:08:13:58
Agent Palmer
So is it plural? Like is it still a database just like the like not. We’ll take the pilot one out for now, but is it still a database just like the other one?
00:08:14:03 – 00:08:46:16
Chris Webster
No, no it’s not. It’s the whole it’s the whole act of managing cultural resources. Archeological sites in the United States. It’s surveying and identification, it’s preservation, it’s science communication. It’s all the things related to the history of the people that have lived on this continent, right from the historic to the prehistoric past. Cultural resources management is the industry that’s set up to identify and preserve and document archeological sites.
00:08:46:16 – 00:08:53:56
Chris Webster
Basically, that’s what CRM archeology is in the United States. It’s also called CRM in a lot of other states. But sometimes, you know, the letters are different because like agent stuff.
00:08:53:58 – 00:08:56:15
Agent Palmer
All right. So so you have your first job.
00:08:56:15 – 00:09:12:29
Chris Webster
So that’s it. Yeah, I’ve got my first job and I’m and I’m asking around, you know, I’m like, I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what that is. You learn stuff in school. It’s mostly theory. And then I went to, most archeologists go to a field school of some type, which basically is like a 4 to 6 week long program over the summer.
00:09:12:29 – 00:09:32:14
Chris Webster
That is, it’s usually intended to teach them something about archeology, something you know, about all the different little facets of archeology and different, you know, testing techniques and digging and artifact identification, stuff like that. There’s various qualities to field schools and what I’ll teach you, but that’s kind of the idea. The real answer is they don’t teach you everything right.
00:09:32:14 – 00:09:56:35
Chris Webster
And you don’t learn everything that you learn that your their teach you anyway. So when you get to your first job, even your first few jobs, you’re like, okay, I vaguely remember that, but you’re going to have to explain that again. And I started, you know, I wasn’t getting some of the answers that I wanted because, I mean, sometimes the people I was working with, either they didn’t know where the real origin of something or, you know, they just weren’t good teachers, to be honest.
00:09:56:40 – 00:10:20:22
Chris Webster
And I was thinking, why isn’t there a book about this? Why isn’t there a, you know, a rough guide to shovel bums with shovel bums? Is that a colloquial term for people who do archeology around the country on a job job basis? And, it’s like, why isn’t there a rough guide to that? In fact, I one of my first things a year into being an archeologist, I actually contacted the Rough Guide series of books and says, I think there should be a book about this.
00:10:20:22 – 00:10:35:43
Chris Webster
And they said to send over a table of contents and a sample chapter, which I wrote up, and they said it’s too niche of a topic. I don’t think we can do this. And I’m like, you literally have a rough guide to opera. Like how many people are buying that? But anyway, I mean, yeah, that’s so that’s so that that would never happen.
00:10:35:43 – 00:10:36:39
Chris Webster
I think it.
00:10:36:39 – 00:11:05:18
Agent Palmer
Could, could is an industry thing like I so I go back episode five of this podcast I had Tristan on and we you know, obviously we talked a lot about a lot of things. But it feels to me that when you take apart the industry as a whole and you remove the I want to be Indiana Jones people, you end up with a, an industry that’s not understood.
00:11:05:23 – 00:11:29:02
Agent Palmer
So it’s there’s, you know. Yeah. Of everything you’re doing, I feel like the biggest hurdle. And I think I said this with Tristan, and the biggest opportunity you have with the podcast network is reaching people like me, or maybe not me, like, I, I appreciate history and I read those books, so I’m not like, you know, what’s tomorrow like?
00:11:29:02 – 00:11:46:00
Agent Palmer
I do turn around, but, on a whole, most people think you’re Indiana Jones. And I don’t mean like general, but on a whole, that’s that’s everywhere. Yeah. So there’s a there’s a problem because that’s not what you do.
00:11:46:05 – 00:12:06:52
Chris Webster
No. Not necessarily. And and not only do they think we’re Indiana Jones, but they also think where, you know, what was his name? Him. And it’s him and his wife, the two, the two paleontologists in Jurassic Park. Oh, yeah. Because they’re always like, oh, oh, you’re an archeologist, you know, you’re you’re Indiana Jones. Have you found any dinosaurs?
00:12:06:54 – 00:12:15:10
Chris Webster
I’m like, those are 62 disciplines separated by 65 million years at least. So the answer is no.
00:12:15:15 – 00:12:36:37
Chris Webster
If you find dinosaurs in archeology, you’re probably digging either two deeper in the wrong spot. So yeah, that just makes you a bad archeologist. But yeah, I mean, you’re right. And people people romanticize the job, and it’s purely because of the Indiana Jones movies, I think. And also because of travel. Right. People see that as a job filled with travel.
00:12:36:37 – 00:12:54:38
Chris Webster
And they’re not wrong. Even if you even if you have a salary job with a company in one city, chances are you’re traveling all over that state or region for the work that you’re doing, right. You’re not leaving your office to go 30 minutes away. I mean, some places that have a high density of, like construction and things like San Diego and, places like that, they need archeological.
00:12:54:38 – 00:13:11:54
Agent Palmer
I just imagine you being like, I’m an archeologist. This is my whole. There are others like it, but this is mine. And you just dig down for, like, ever. Like, that’s your job. This is your ten by ten foot square. Dig down until you hit molten core. Like what?
00:13:11:59 – 00:13:32:04
Chris Webster
It’s not really wrong. I mean, you’re you’re not too far off base, but we do have reasons to stop. But, you know, what I that’s that’s what separates like, like cultural resource management or CRM archeology, like professional archeology, they call it from academic archeology, the ones people really think of when they think Indiana Jones. He was a college professor.
00:13:32:09 – 00:13:48:26
Chris Webster
They always think, oh, you know, anytime I tell somebody that I’m an archeologist, usually one of the first questions is, what school do you work for? And when I tell them I don’t work for a school, I’m independent. I own my own company. They’re like, what does that even mean? I didn’t even know that was a thing. And I’m like, yeah, you know that highway you drove here on?
00:13:48:31 – 00:14:06:06
Chris Webster
Archeologists surveyed it before it was a highway. You know what I mean? So that’s and it wasn’t an academic project unless it was done back in like the 70s or the 60s, but if it was done since the 80s, then, you know, professional career archeologists are the ones that did that. Not to not to say that academics aren’t career archeologists.
00:14:06:08 – 00:14:22:52
Chris Webster
It’s just a different path. But the academics, more to your point, they will dig in one spot for 30 years. You know what I mean? I mean, they will they will find their thing that they did their thesis on when they were 25 or their PhD, and they will be there when they’re 75, still writing about it.
00:14:23:04 – 00:14:43:02
Agent Palmer
So but there’s got to be there’s gotta be no amount of burnout with that, I would think, because I just, Yeah, sure. I mean, especially for academics where, you know, every four years you’ve got a new class and there’s turnover within, you know, there’s sophomores that are leaving in other juniors that are coming in. And, you know, I get that.
00:14:43:02 – 00:15:06:21
Agent Palmer
But, to be that singular focused and maybe it’s because I can’t focus on anything ever, but like to have that singular focus is there, you know, do people change their disciplines and like, you know, hey, I like history, but, okay, maybe not. And I’m going to go broad right? But like, maybe not so much with the Romans.
00:15:06:21 – 00:15:15:39
Agent Palmer
Like, I’m going to go to the Far East and learn, like, do people change their disciplines? They’re like, no, you wrote your thesis. You kind of made your bed. Now sleep in it.
00:15:15:44 – 00:15:42:55
Chris Webster
You’re definitely not locked in. Okay. Right. But for the most part, people do approach a study area for specific reasons, right? Maybe that was their passion since they were a child or more often than not, they wanted to be an archeologist. And when they got when they finished their undergrad, if they went straight into like a PhD program, which a lot of academics will go, you know, right into a PhD program, if they’re advised properly, they will be asked, what are you interested in?
00:15:42:55 – 00:16:04:46
Chris Webster
Are you interested in Egyptology? Are you interested in, you know, Near Eastern antiquities or China or something like that? Whatever you’re interested in, you find the university that has people at that university that are doing that research, and then you try to get to that university for your PhD. If you do, you’re going to learn under them. All you’re learning is going to be, you know, focused around this one specific area.
00:16:04:51 – 00:16:19:45
Chris Webster
And typically there are many, many questions to be answered. Right. It’s not like you get bored of studying the Chinese. I mean, maybe you do, right? Or maybe you get bored of studying the Romans, but it’s really have you run out of questions. And they’re usually the answer to that is no. We haven’t run out of questions. There’s lots of questions.
00:16:19:45 – 00:16:41:38
Chris Webster
So and the thing is to your your opportunity to dig or survey or work in the field at these sites is usually in the context of the aforementioned field school, which might only be 4 to 6 weeks, maybe eight weeks, if you’re lucky. And during that amount of time, it’s just a massive amount of data collection that will take you and your work, study students or whoever.
00:16:41:43 – 00:16:58:46
Chris Webster
The rest of the school year to analyze, and that may not achieve that, may not even provide the answers to the question that sent you to that location in the first place, or you know what you were looking for. Or maybe it it developed into ten other questions, and now you’ve got to write those up. And and that’s different papers and research.
00:16:58:46 – 00:17:16:00
Chris Webster
And I mean one site or at least one discipline or one region or one focus, I mean, really could take an entire career because there’s a lot to know if you stay interested in it, if you don’t stay interested in it, well, nobody’s going to tell you, you can’t switch. But it might be tough if you don’t have the, the research history.
00:17:16:00 – 00:17:48:06
Agent Palmer
To back it up. I mean, my, my, my experience in, you know, a and it okay. So it’s it’s definitely skewed. Right. But I read Michener’s The Source a long time ago twice actually. And you know, in it he reverse chronologically tells the story of a tell which, you know, I guess for, for someone who doesn’t know, it’s like a city built upon a city built upon a city, and it ends up being a mound of dirt right over time.
00:17:48:06 – 00:18:14:16
Agent Palmer
And, so, so having read that book and how it just and it’s been a long time, but I know there there are massive jumps, right. Like when when he’s talking about the very bottom, it’s like, you know, let’s say, you know, use round numbers. So it’s it’s like zero. And then all of a sudden he’s, you know, it, it jumps to 505 hundred years went by like what the.
00:18:14:21 – 00:18:46:02
Agent Palmer
But you’re just digging down. It’s you know obviously that that makes sense. So I understand that. But again like I, I wander so I, I go like, how do you, okay. I mean, maybe in the, in the, in relation to a tell, like, I’m, I’m getting different histories. So now it’s all about the region as opposed to, you know, something else at is that I guess that’s what’s the difference, right?
00:18:46:02 – 00:19:13:15
Agent Palmer
Because like, obviously I’m talking about you, you can study the history of a region, but you can also study the history of a people. And, and if it’s a people, they might move. So you’re not necessarily in the same spot, right. Like people migrate. Sure. It’s just I, it’s weird because, we always like to think of history as static.
00:19:13:20 – 00:19:41:44
Agent Palmer
I and I think that might be one of the big misconceptions, right? Like, yeah, people move around, but, you know how far like, question mark, you know, okay. Like that’s where the house was I’m done. Not. Well where were they before that. And where are they. After which I feel like our standard CRM questions like where were they before that house.
00:19:41:44 – 00:19:46:24
Agent Palmer
Well somebody had to build that house and where were they after. Because they’re not in it now. Right.
00:19:46:29 – 00:20:07:51
Chris Webster
Well and you’ve got to you’ve got to define that too. Right. Like who. Who is they. Is it is it one family that you’re talking about or is it their ancestors and their descendants? Is it is it the entire village? You know, obviously in a lot of circumstances, I mean, people are moving around in that context, in that geological slice of time quite frequently.
00:20:07:51 – 00:20:30:08
Chris Webster
Right? Even if they stay in one place in one village and, and they have children after children, after children, and they have children and they have children and they have children and they’re there for 100 years. 100 years is really difficult to define. Archeologically. Right. It’s really difficult to define. We might have a couple instances where we know that this is a single time event, like a hearth or a fire pit or something like that, but that’s pretty much it.
00:20:30:08 – 00:20:52:04
Chris Webster
Right? Some of the other artifacts there, we might find a bunch of things, and if we can’t prove that it was a single use event because of their association with each other in the landscape, you could be talking several hundred years with just a single, you know, small unit, with artifacts and features in it. So. Or a few thousand years for that matter, if it’s someplace that they went back to frequently.
00:20:52:08 – 00:21:06:44
Chris Webster
So it really just depends on where you’re at in the world and how people use the landscape in those areas. When you start talking about stuff like that, but then you can look at stuff like Roman cities and sure, the city doesn’t go anywhere the city might have. The city has structures that have been there for thousands of years at this point.
00:21:06:44 – 00:21:26:30
Chris Webster
Right. There’s Roman cities that still have things that are 2000, you know, 2500 years old, still standing in those locations, but the people moved around. Can you track that? You know, can you track where the individuals went in some cases you can because like, like people who are, you know, potters and other things like that, they sign off their stuff a lot.
00:21:26:35 – 00:21:39:04
Chris Webster
So you can actually track, like, you know, if you track their signature and you find out where they’re at, like artists and things like that, you can find their things. But the common person, you probably can’t. So, yeah, it’s it’s tough.
00:21:39:04 – 00:22:08:16
Agent Palmer
As a person in the industry. Right. How do you deal with the I guess is as a personal question, like how do you personally deal with the fact that history changes? Because and look, the layman, the every man is never going to pay attention to that kind of stuff. I think for the most part, like I’m, I’m kind of at least digitally in your circle.
00:22:08:16 – 00:22:31:20
Agent Palmer
So I understand that different things change perception and the theory of 50 years ago about how this farmer in this particular part of the world, in this particular part of the area era area, and I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. Like, it just changes, right? Like this guy went this direction for water, and then we find something new or a new thing comes out or whatever.
00:22:31:20 – 00:22:50:28
Agent Palmer
And now it’s like, well, he went that direction. We were wrong within the right. You know, for the average person, they’re like, what does it matter what direction? And I understand it. It does. But like things are always fluid, right. Like we can’t go back and look at the film.
00:22:50:33 – 00:22:54:11
Chris Webster
So it, you know.
00:22:54:15 – 00:23:19:18
Agent Palmer
It’s everything you’re taught. There’s always the potential that everything you learned. And I’m not talking like how the thing, how you know, like how to dig, you know, that’s kind of like. But the, the stories, the facts can change. How how do you. Yeah. Like at any moment, like somebody smart could come around and change it. How do you deal with that?
00:23:19:23 – 00:23:39:05
Chris Webster
I think you have to just be not so tied to your, your own conclusions. Right. But you have to be fluid and understand that this is a science and new evidence means new conclusions in a lot of cases. But that gets real difficult. And it’s one of the big problems of academia, right? CRM archeologists. And we can talk about this in a minute.
00:23:39:10 – 00:23:56:43
Chris Webster
We don’t often have these issues because of the way that our jobs are. We’re always on some different place, working on some different thing. And and we can’t determine what that is. We go where the jobs are, we go where the, you know, the law says, hey, something needs to be done here. Goes out to bid your company wins.
00:23:56:43 – 00:24:15:06
Chris Webster
Now you’re digging here. I didn’t choose to dig there. I didn’t choose what the subject matter was. I’m just there now. Right? But academics, they find a site, they have questions they want answered. They they want to do a particular thing. They might be doing that for 30 years. And then some upstart grad student comes along and says, you know what?
00:24:15:11 – 00:24:37:27
Chris Webster
This is all been completely misinterpreted and here’s why. And I can prove it. And then this person’s life works is now in question, not because of anything they did wrong, but just because of evidence or a new technique or a new, you know, a new scientific, discovery or a new machine or something that does different analytics on what they’ve been saying has totally upended their whole theories.
00:24:37:27 – 00:25:01:29
Chris Webster
I wouldn’t say that happens a lot, but it does happen for sure. And some people handle it better than others. I, to be honest, and academics don’t handle it well because they base their entire career, their whole reputation on on a thing. Yeah. Like usually like one concept or one site or one area. And when that gets challenged, they usually don’t give it up until they die.
00:25:01:42 – 00:25:29:11
Chris Webster
And then now, now we can move on, you know? So what was CRM? That’s what I’m saying. Like CRM is mandated federally and and at the state level. Right. So I get jobs like I’m doing a job in June and July in northeastern Nevada. It’s not my choice to necessarily work up there, but I’ve got a client who, she’s the environmental manager at a gold mine, and I’ve been working with them on small projects for the last ten years.
00:25:29:11 – 00:25:46:03
Chris Webster
I’m basically their only contractor that they work with. And now they’ve got this huge thing and now I’m working up there, and I brought in two other firms to help out. And because it’s just too big for for me to handle on my own, and I didn’t choose to do that. And I don’t have any research questions that are pertinent to the area.
00:25:46:18 – 00:26:10:29
Chris Webster
Our job is to collect as much data as possible. That’s a minimum of 50 years old. Well, 40 years in this case, because it’s forest Service land. A lot of times it’s 50. But, it’s a there’s a minimum timeframe that you look at roads, mining features, prehistoric features that date back thousands of years. You’re basically just cataloging and describing all the things that you find within a predetermined area that they want to work in, and you determine what’s what.
00:26:10:29 – 00:26:31:59
Chris Webster
It’s historical significance is based on what it is. Is it rare? Is it common? Is it something we need to do, have further study on, you know, that that kind of stuff. And then, they make a decision on whether or not they’re going to proceed into that area. If they are, you might have to actually dig some holes and go further, or they’ll can avoid it and just not deal with it.
00:26:32:04 – 00:26:46:04
Chris Webster
But that’s our job. Our job isn’t necessarily to analyze things. And we we have research questions that are fundamental to the area, you know, basic stuff because we have to ask them, like, what was transportation? Like, what about migration? Who lived here? Those are natural questions you’re going to answer.
00:26:46:09 – 00:26:47:08
Agent Palmer
Are you getting some of that?
00:26:47:08 – 00:27:06:40
Chris Webster
But we don’t really go deeper than that. No, we’re getting it from our own industry, right? We’re getting it from we’re getting it from years of these are basic research questions. So there’s always questions of, you know, what kind of activities were happening here? Was it ranching? If it’s prehistoric, if it’s historic, was it ranching. Was it was it immigration?
00:27:06:40 – 00:27:22:28
Chris Webster
Was it, you know, was it is it a trail? People were walking on to get from one place to the next? Was it mining? You know, all those kinds of things. If it’s prehistoric, was it a habitation site? Did people live here? Was it a hunting site? What is, you know, all the other things that prehistoric peoples did in that area.
00:27:22:43 – 00:27:40:51
Chris Webster
You have to know something about the area and know something about you know, who you’re talking about. If you don’t know anything about the people in the area, which is rare these days, but if you don’t know anything about them, then you ask the more generic questions who was here and what were they doing? And those are the questions you’re trying to answer with your, with your surveys and your discoveries.
00:27:40:56 – 00:27:42:05
Chris Webster
So you try your.
00:27:42:05 – 00:27:49:09
Agent Palmer
Best as a CRM. How much time do you get? Like, do you get a month? A week?
00:27:49:14 – 00:28:07:13
Chris Webster
Well, yeah, that’s a good question. It it depends on the project. Right. If the client has a predetermined timeframe, like if it’s a construction client. Like, for example, we’ve got a small phase of this project that they need to have bulldozers on the ground on some roads that we have to survey by the end of July.
00:28:07:13 – 00:28:30:32
Chris Webster
I think, which means we have a priority to start in June. We can’t start until June because the whole year is covered in snow till at least the end of May. So otherwise we’d be starting in May. But we’re going to start at the first or second week of June based on snowmelt. And we have a priority to finish these, this one section so we can write it up so the Forest Service can, do the, read the report, do the comments.
00:28:30:32 – 00:28:49:18
Chris Webster
We have a chance to make revisions based on their recommendations. Then the client can sign off. Then they can bring in their road graders and their bulldozers by the end of July, because it takes a good month and a half for that regulatory process to happen before, you know, they can they have permission to do that. And then all the other stuff we’re doing is for work that they’re going to do in 2022.
00:28:49:18 – 00:29:07:45
Chris Webster
So we got plenty of time to get all that signed off, get it finished. So the field work is often based on one of two things. It’s based on either the client has a hard stop, right. They like we need this done by this date because that’s just the way it is. If that’s the case, if it’s a short period of time, then you just hire more people, right?
00:29:07:45 – 00:29:26:31
Chris Webster
Like as a company owner, I’m going to choose to hire as fewer people as possible because, let’s be honest, the fewer people you have, the, fewer people that can get hurt. I like to employ people for longer periods of time because archeologists in this, in this profession, they’re working from job to job. And I’d rather not hire 40 people for a week.
00:29:26:31 – 00:29:42:15
Chris Webster
I’d rather hire four people for ten weeks, if I can. Right. It’s the same amount of money to me. I don’t really care. But people would rather be employed longer. And if I have the ability to do that, then I’d rather do that. Right. Because it’s just better for the for the employees. But sometimes you just don’t have that ability, right?
00:29:42:15 – 00:30:03:33
Chris Webster
Like this one. After this first priority, it’s just we have to get it done before the end of the summer, which in that area is early October right before it starts snowing again. So you know the rest of it. I mean, we’re probably going to take a month and a half to two months to do it because I’m only bringing on a couple people and, you know, we’re just going to work, until we get it done.
00:30:03:33 – 00:30:10:17
Chris Webster
And, and that and that is what it is. So, yeah, timeframe dictated by multiple circumstances. No project is the same.
00:30:10:22 – 00:30:38:34
Agent Palmer
All right. So, what about digital and what I mean by that is what what about digital archeology? Like, I, I got rid of a server. I got rid of a hard drive, like, there’s I’m not. I don’t have to call you in, like, before I do that. I don’t, you know, you know, let’s say it’s, you know, I get called in by a company to, I don’t know, reformat some hard drives that they’re getting rid of.
00:30:38:34 – 00:30:55:25
Agent Palmer
Like, no one’s being like that. Data might be useful to us or something like so, you know, is. Or are we just like. Or there just going to be holes from, like, stuff that, you know, pre-internet stuff that just never made it is that.
00:30:55:30 – 00:31:24:36
Chris Webster
Well, first off, first off, it’s interesting you asking me about digital archeology because I, my brain first went to using digital methods in archeology because I had one of my podcast, The Architect podcast. We talk about digital archeology literally all the time. That’s what that podcast is about, the intersection of technology and archeology. Because even in 2021, it’s still a hard sell to get field archeologists to even use tablets or smartphones in the field to record their data.
00:31:24:36 – 00:31:29:20
Chris Webster
And that’s what most people think of as digital archeology. So what?
00:31:29:25 – 00:31:50:10
Agent Palmer
I will get back to my digital art. But so they’re just they’re just going in with paper and pen. I’m like, cool, it’s fine. But is that just paper and pen and. Yeah. And then you have to transcribe that to the report. So you’re typing up your notes because obviously you know you’re not hand emailing. Here’s my.
00:31:50:10 – 00:31:53:33
Chris Webster
Notes.
00:31:53:38 – 00:32:12:40
Chris Webster
Yeah. Yeah. No you’re totally right. And there’s so much room for error there. Right. Like transcribing somebody’s heat stroke. You know scribble I’m left handed. Partly my reason for going down the digital road over ten years ago. Nobody can read my handwriting. Right. So I just I scribble, I scratch, I it doesn’t look good. I drag my hand across the paper.
00:32:12:40 – 00:32:15:58
Chris Webster
Whether I’m using pen or pencil, it doesn’t matter. I’m left handed. It’s all you’re.
00:32:15:58 – 00:32:20:48
Agent Palmer
Out in the heat. So any a little bit, you know, smudges now. Yeah.
00:32:20:53 – 00:32:40:56
Chris Webster
Okay. I’m sweating. I’m. I’m covered in bug spray and sunscreen. I’ve got this paste on me, and now I’m covered in dirt, too, and it’s just it’s windy. It’s just a recipe for disaster when it comes to notes. And yet still archeologists are hanging on, kicking and screaming to their to their right in the rain notebooks, in their clipboards, in their paper and their pencils.
00:32:40:56 – 00:33:02:50
Chris Webster
And it’s total lunacy. But, that’s where we’re at even here in 2021. So, yeah. Now to your question that that becomes really, really interesting because it it comes down to it comes down to a really difficult question to answer of what’s worth saving, because we don’t know what’s worth saving until we need it.
00:33:02:50 – 00:33:03:33
Agent Palmer
All right. That’s right.
00:33:03:37 – 00:33:29:48
Chris Webster
Speaking, speaking. Archeologically. My my common example is always, Chaco Canyon in north western New Mexico. Huge area, lots of, you know, fantastic, like old, like a thousand year old or little, like 1400 year old or so, structures built by Native Americans in that area. Right. And these military, I think there was a military branch, of they were I guess they were exploring or surveying or something.
00:33:29:52 – 00:33:47:44
Chris Webster
They came by in the in the late 1800s, I think it was or maybe early 1900s. And they just stopped by and said, wow, this place is super cool. Let’s chill here for a bit. And along the walls on the inside of one of these structures, probably lots of the structures, you could see scorch and soot marks were where the prehistoric people had a fire pit right there.
00:33:47:44 – 00:34:03:32
Chris Webster
So these guys are like, yeah, that does look like a great place for a fire. Let’s build one. They didn’t know anything about carbon 14 dating because it wasn’t invented for another 70 years. Right. But now because they put fires there, we can no longer carbon carbon date those cars. We can’t carbon date the soot on the walls.
00:34:03:41 – 00:34:22:41
Chris Webster
We can’t do any of it because they destroyed it. And but they didn’t know they were destroying it. And that’s that’s why we collect so much information. As archeologists, we try to write down photographs, sample as much as we can, because something might be invented in 20 years that we have no idea even exists, that we can then go back and apply to that.
00:34:22:41 – 00:34:40:32
Chris Webster
I mean, how many how many police cases have you seen? You know, salt by DNA. They collected something that had DNA on it before. They even know DNA was a thing that you could test right before the human genome was sequenced. And all these cases are now being solved because because we have the DNA evidence. And that’s that’s probably the best example of that.
00:34:40:41 – 00:34:58:48
Chris Webster
So when it comes down to your computer, it’s like before you hit the delete key or before you, you know, put a drill through that hard drive. Like, how do you know what’s important? And I don’t know I don’t know, man. It comes down to it comes down to space. If we could save everything, we probably should save everything.
00:34:58:48 – 00:35:09:24
Chris Webster
But we don’t have a proper way to to really index it and search it, and it just becomes a jumbled, cluttered mess. But that does lead into Arco gaming, which is something we know.
00:35:09:24 – 00:35:39:28
Agent Palmer
I, I’ve been kind of slightly fascinated by Arco gaming and yet staying on staying away from it because I, I don’t want to get to I feel like I have the potential to like, dive in to things. So there are times when I stay on the periphery on purpose, like, you know, we’re recording this in the summer ish spring, right?
00:35:39:33 – 00:36:02:38
Agent Palmer
And, I’m, I’m a baseball fan, and I watch every one of my team’s games. I if, if, if my girlfriend wants to watch a movie, that’s fine. I put the game on mute. Just as like an old school picture in picture. It’s just another device. Just kind of near the TV, right? I’m that fanatic about it.
00:36:02:43 – 00:36:19:41
Agent Palmer
And I did this a couple of years ago, and I. I really haven’t missed a game since, for better or worse. Oh, it’s not, they’re not I’m not going to out myself right now, but, like, they’re not a good team. They haven’t been for a long time. It’s just, you know, I enjoy baseball and now I’ve become fanatic with it.
00:36:19:41 – 00:36:46:43
Agent Palmer
So when you talk about archaeal gaming, there’s a part of me that’s like, just stay, stay away. Like, don’t, don’t get too far in because I’m also the guy who’s got seven more dating books. And then I’ve read all, I don’t know, 45 that he’s wrote. And now I found other authors who I’m also, you know, almost religiously reading through there I am.
00:36:46:48 – 00:37:03:41
Agent Palmer
Thank God I never got into hard drives like seriously. But so archaeal gaming like, I know a little bit and I know about, you know, obviously when it comes to Akio gaming, everybody talks about one thing in particular and that’s it.
00:37:03:46 – 00:37:07:12
Chris Webster
The oh yeah. Oh yeah. Right, right. Yeah.
00:37:07:17 – 00:37:21:20
Agent Palmer
That’s the one that had the flashy documentary and I think Ernest Cline shows up. Okay, well, hold on with the Delorean in that in the documentary, which is why it’s the flashy documentary. Right.
00:37:21:25 – 00:37:30:33
Chris Webster
That that wouldn’t surprise me. That wouldn’t surprise me. I’m kind of surprised those haven’t showed up. We’re like, my wife and I are listening as we drive to, Ready Player two, and we’re only like.
00:37:30:34 – 00:37:31:19
Agent Palmer
I read that.
00:37:31:24 – 00:37:32:58
Chris Webster
Two thirds of the way through it.
00:37:33:03 – 00:37:59:58
Agent Palmer
I yeah, I, I yeah, it’s so I look honestly one of the interesting things as a side note and maybe it’s part of Akio Gaming Ready Player One Armada which no one should sleep on. Armada. Because if you liked Ready Player One and you like The Last Starfighter, Armada is the book for you. Period. Full stop and then Ready player two.
00:38:00:08 – 00:38:14:56
Agent Palmer
All of these books have an element of Akio Gaming, because the pop culture references are are historically accurate to appear a certain period of time that it’s like, right.
00:38:14:57 – 00:38:15:26
Chris Webster
If you.
00:38:15:26 – 00:38:43:47
Agent Palmer
Were born after 1984, five, six, somewhere in there. Some of these things you may remember if they had like a culturally lasting impression, maybe like a wargames type scenario where it kept staying longer. But other than that, like you need an older brother, or you need to be kind of looking backwards and fascinated by a certain period of pop culture if you don’t know it.
00:38:43:47 – 00:38:52:20
Agent Palmer
Yeah, you don’t know it. You don’t know the music, you don’t know the movies, you don’t know the television, and you’re just lost.
00:38:52:25 – 00:39:13:54
Chris Webster
There’s so much in those books, too. I mean, I was born in 75, so I was pretty impressionable in the 80s, and it’s, it’s it’s a lot even for me. Right? Like. And I wasn’t obsessed with it by 80 means. I just simply lived through it. And, you know, I recognize I feel like I recognize most things, but the things I don’t recognize, I wouldn’t know anyway.
00:39:13:59 – 00:39:36:27
Chris Webster
So there you go. But, it’s it’s fascinating. With Akio Gaming, there’s really two aspects to Akio gaming, right? And the the basic one is in the ate stuff for me, like the E.T. video games. And if you don’t know what we’re talking about, the Atari made an E.T. video game that was a huge flop, and they buried, like, 200,000 cartridges that didn’t sell in the desert in Arizona.
00:39:36:32 – 00:39:56:49
Chris Webster
And then they dug them up, a while back. And Andrew Reinhard is an Arc gaming guy archeologist who was actually in that documentary and he wrote a book recently. I say recently, probably a couple of years ago now called RKO gaming. So if you’re interested in this, go check it out. But Akio Gaming has basically two different elements to it, two very different elements to it.
00:39:56:54 – 00:40:17:43
Chris Webster
One of them is about games in archeology, and the other one is truly archeology, I think. And the first one is representation of archeology in video games. Right. You take like the Assassin’s Creed series, you take, I mean, the straight up Indiana Jones games and Lara Croft games and stuff like that. Anything that’s actually based on or loosely based on archeology, that’s archeology.
00:40:17:48 – 00:40:22:37
Chris Webster
How is archeology and history and culture represented in these?
00:40:22:48 – 00:40:46:13
Agent Palmer
So hold storyline real quick and is, you know, how people interact past this for a moment because, yeah, the biggest, game of the pandemic was Animal Crossing. And I remember the originally I didn’t play the new one, but the original Animal Crossing had fossils. So with that, I mean, they were all for the most part, dinosaur bones and I’m not.
00:40:46:18 – 00:40:51:56
Agent Palmer
So. So is that sure that paleo gaming.
00:40:52:01 – 00:41:08:42
Chris Webster
I mean, maybe, right. It probably is, I’m sure. I don’t know if paleontologists are so obsessed with this as archeologists are. So I don’t know if they if they tear apart the, like, Jurassic Park video games and stuff like that and references like that Animal Crossing, I don’t know if they do that as much as archeologists do.
00:41:08:46 – 00:41:09:10
Chris Webster
I.
00:41:09:12 – 00:41:18:49
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I mean, it’s but because, because culturally that’s the one with probably the broadest reach other than maybe like the Star Wars game. Yes. I think.
00:41:18:54 – 00:41:37:33
Chris Webster
Right, right. But you’re, you’re, you’re getting into something that kind of crosses the lines between the two sides of argue gaming, from my perspective. Again, one of them is how are things represented? So that is like the bones and the the artifacts and the storylines and the people and stuff like that. The other one is the actual archeology of the video game.
00:41:37:38 – 00:41:56:08
Chris Webster
When you have a multiplayer universe or world. I’m, I’m not a huge gamer, so I probably get all the terms wrong. But when you have, a world like this that is generated and people interact with it, one of the common examples is World of Warcraft, right? I don’t know if that’s even still going, but it’s well over 20 years old.
00:41:56:08 – 00:41:56:58
Chris Webster
It came back in. Okay.
00:41:56:58 – 00:41:59:42
Agent Palmer
So so yeah, it just keeps going.
00:41:59:47 – 00:42:08:37
Chris Webster
Yeah. And another one, there’s two others that I’ll bring up to, and I know there’s probably lots and lots more that I’m not even aware of. Two others. One is No Man’s Sky. Okay. I think.
00:42:08:37 – 00:42:17:46
Agent Palmer
That that’s, that’s that’s the. And what’s the quote unquote big one because it was the first to come out that was supposed to be never ending like always.
00:42:17:46 – 00:42:46:15
Chris Webster
I really generated. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so we’ll talk about that in a second, because Andrew Reinhart was part of something in there too. And then the other one is I mean, Second Life, you know, Second Life is still hanging on somehow as a thing. I was just actually interested in it the other day as we’ve been reading through, Ready Player One and Ready Player two and their whole virtual world, the Oasis or their virtual galaxy or universe, the Oasis.
00:42:46:20 – 00:43:07:02
Chris Webster
I’m like, what do we have that’s comparable to that on, you know, in our time frame today? One of those things truly is Second Life, because in Second Life you don’t have different worlds, but you have different islands that people own that can be of an infinite size. To be honest, I don’t think there’s a limit to the amount of land you can purchase in there for your money, and then the things that you can do on that land.
00:43:07:02 – 00:43:27:28
Chris Webster
And it’d be interesting because when Second Second Life like exploded, I think it was around maybe ten years ago, a little less than ten years ago. And Science Friday on NPR had Science Friday Island on Second Life. There’s a full recreation of the Starship enterprise that you can walk around on. There’s archeological sites, people recreated in Second Life, and those places are actual ghost towns.
00:43:27:28 – 00:43:43:40
Chris Webster
Right now. Like nobody’s going there because the people that are still in Second Life are kind of the diehards. And you don’t hear about it promoted. You don’t hear about people talking about it. It was huge when when, you know, it blew up for some reason, whatever. It’s been around for a long time, too. And then all of a sudden it gained in popularity.
00:43:43:45 – 00:44:17:17
Chris Webster
But then it it dropped right back down again. So the archeology of something like that would be going through an archeology is all about documentation, right? It’s all about documentation and learning from things that happened before. What can we learn from that? What can we learn about it? You can do the same thing in those types of world Second Life, World of Warcraft, and now something like No Man’s Sky and any other universe that’s not automatically destroyed by the servers after a certain period of time, as long as you can see the effects of things that human or the non-player characters or whoever did on the landscape, well, you can document that.
00:44:17:28 – 00:44:38:27
Chris Webster
And then then you have to ask the question, well, is there value to that? Probably. You know, I know somebody who almost failed college because of World of Warcraft. It’s like all he was doing that’s a really big part of his life. And it’s a really big part of millions of people’s lives. And it’s not in it’s experiences that are completely undocumented by, you know, real life to.
00:44:38:30 – 00:44:39:22
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Yeah. I mean.
00:44:39:28 – 00:44:40:31
Chris Webster
So it’s it’s an interesting.
00:44:40:31 – 00:44:44:23
Agent Palmer
Game and I’m sure somebody missed a class for it.
00:44:44:27 – 00:44:47:35
Chris Webster
I like it. It’s just that’s just.
00:44:47:35 – 00:45:10:55
Agent Palmer
The nature of gaming I think to to a certain extent. But I yeah, I hear you because, you know, I, I go back through old games occasionally. I’m, I probably have a decent Akio gaming collection because I hold on to one old computer just so I can play old games. From my youth of the mid 90s, early and mid 90s.
00:45:10:59 – 00:45:38:11
Agent Palmer
Because it’s not easy. Like. And that’s the other part. As technology moves, we evolve away from these things. So I might have a disc from 1988 I can’t. Yeah. Even if it’s a CD, I can’t just throw it in my current computer and play it. And even if I could, there’s a lot of computers that don’t even have optical disc drives.
00:45:38:16 – 00:46:08:43
Agent Palmer
So yeah, we are. It’s almost self-destructing because as technology evolves and as programing languages change, physical disks aren’t really a thing anymore. So, okay, you might you might hold on to that disc. What are you going to do with it now? Yeah, like good luck. Good luck finding a floppy drive like even 3.5. Good luck. Like I have one.
00:46:08:43 – 00:46:42:21
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And I’ll lend it to you, like, if you really want it, but, like, So. So I understand that I’m just slightly fat. I maybe I pick up Reinhardt’s book. It he he comes up a lot, because was like a guy on the periphery. He was like, that’s slightly interesting. Like he’s he’s one of the main, focuses, but I but I, I wanted to kind of circle back to you because I do you know, we talked a little bit about Indiana Jones.
00:46:42:26 – 00:47:06:23
Agent Palmer
When people find out that you have a pilot’s license, do they go, so you are Indiana Jones. Like, does that do they double down when they find out that, like, you know, because I imagine if I met you at a party and you’re like, well, you know, I, you know, I’m an archeologist, you know, in layman’s terms, I’m an archeologist.
00:47:06:23 – 00:47:20:03
Agent Palmer
All right. That’s cool, you know? And maybe I won’t go Indiana Jones for a moment. But then as we continue talking and you say, well, I have a pilot’s license, immediately map red dots across it immediately.
00:47:20:08 – 00:47:46:03
Chris Webster
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s interesting because when I was, I don’t know, when I was probably, you know, super young, you know, ten. Whatever. The first Indiana Jones movie, I’m sure I think that came out in the mid 80s and, probably sometime around then. Who knows? Because I was also alive. Or not alive, but I was also.
00:47:46:05 – 00:48:05:27
Chris Webster
Well, I was alive, but I was also around and aware when the challenger disaster happened right about the same time. And for for as long as I can remember, I wanted to be one of three things. I wanted to be, an archeologist, a pilot or an astronaut. And I always tell people, two out of three is not bad, and I’m not 100% certain Elon Musk isn’t going to call at some point.
00:48:05:32 – 00:48:21:07
Chris Webster
So maybe we can hit the trifecta. But you’re right. When I you know, when you tell somebody you’re an archeologist since it’s an instant conversation starter and then so never comes up that I’m a pilot, too. It’s, it’s like, you know, what the hell is going on with your life? That these two things happened.
00:48:21:07 – 00:48:40:31
Agent Palmer
I mean, I immediately go, and maybe it’s because I just, you know, read the book not too long ago, but I read, doctor space junks book on space archeology. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, if you go that route, like, if you. Yeah, I mean, you could hit the trifecta. Like, you don’t even need Elon Musk for that.
00:48:40:31 – 00:49:01:43
Agent Palmer
At a certain point, people are going to be like, well, we need to take a look at the junk that’s up there. You know, and, you know, if we are going to eventually go back to the moon, technically all those what’s remaining of the lunar lander bases are archaea like they’re old now. They’re all 50 years old.
00:49:01:47 – 00:49:05:47
Agent Palmer
They’re all our archeological sites.
00:49:05:52 – 00:49:33:19
Chris Webster
And even if they weren’t 50 years old, one of the other criteria for for making something significant, at least in the US terms of significance, is, is its importance to history. So pretty much anything on another planet already reaches that criteria, right? If even if that planet on the moon, Mars, whatever the case may be, because of its uniqueness and its rarity, and every single one of these things that goes up still today is 100% different from the thing that went up before that.
00:49:33:19 – 00:50:07:49
Chris Webster
Right? Until, until SpaceX really nails down the replicability of, you know, space vehicles and stuff like that. And now we’ve got 100 though things on the planet, then they become common, right? And then then they’re not as as unique and not as archeologically or historically significant. So but people have mapped the moon landing sites and, and, you know, and if we’re ever ready to go up there, they’re, they’re trying to get laws put into place for space tourism in particular, because the first space tourists that are able to land on the moon are going to want to see the moon landing site, the first moon landing site.
00:50:07:49 – 00:50:27:15
Chris Webster
Right. So where like, how do you protect against that without the ability to send up a bunch of park rangers first in spacesuits? Right. You just can’t do that. So you got to have some kind of legal structure in place for when they get back that says, hey, we saw you up there because we have telescopes and your footprints are right next to Neil Armstrong’s, and that’s bad.
00:50:27:19 – 00:50:48:07
Chris Webster
So we want to put this buffer around it, because that’s the other thing. The difference between the moon and Mars, one of the bigger differences is the moon doesn’t really have an atmosphere. So most of the stuff is just still laying where it was. And it’s the only way it gets covered in other stuff is if you know some other impact happens near it and material, you know, gets ejected out and then lands on the thing.
00:50:48:07 – 00:51:16:04
Chris Webster
So if if other landers are landing close enough to it, it could actually move or obscure some of the stuff on the site. Whereas right now, aside from other space impacts, it’s preserved as the day when they left, you know, and and the footprints are there. Everything’s there. But Mars is better for archeologists because, I mean, things that are currently moving around on the planet are getting covered in dust, and they’re just getting consumed by the landscape on a daily basis if they don’t keep moving.
00:51:16:09 – 00:51:31:32
Chris Webster
And I think there was one that there they were trying to get restarted, and they were hoping that there was just a dust storm that lasted for too long in its area, and it covered the solar panels, and they were hoping the dust would blow. The wind would blow the dust back off the solar panels at some point so they could fire the engines back up.
00:51:31:37 – 00:51:34:03
Chris Webster
But it didn’t. So it’s dead forever.
00:51:34:08 – 00:51:55:08
Agent Palmer
Are you telling me that’s like our archeologists would prefer a challenge like Mars or Earth, I guess. Like, let’s not forget what we’ve got here, where things are constantly changing versus the moon, where it’s like, all right, well, that’s the footprint. Like, there it is.
00:51:55:08 – 00:52:20:56
Chris Webster
Yeah, yeah, I know there’s not a whole lot you can do about that, right? You can get up there. You could catalog stuff. But how do you do it without disturbing the other things? You’d have to build some sort of gantry that you could kind of float around in that, in that lower gravity environment. So you don’t actually touch anything, because in a place where things like footprints last for 60 years, it or really a thousand years or longer, you know, a million years, you can’t disturb those.
00:52:20:56 – 00:52:38:52
Chris Webster
You can’t add your own. So how do you actually record? It would have to be from a distance. And then the question goes, well, we should just really preserve it. Do we actually need to write all this down? I’m a little bit minimalist when it comes to archeology, right? I’m all for I mean, I shouldn’t say this on a recording, but I’m all for tearing buildings down right about it.
00:52:39:01 – 00:53:01:22
Chris Webster
3D scan it, then tear it the hell down. We do not need to preserve everything from our own childhoods in order to remember it. In order to memorialize it, we need to tear them down and move on. All those sci fi movies where you see the the whole planet, that’s, that’s an advanced city. It’s literally never going to happen on this planet, because we’re going to be holding on to our mid-century modern crap hotels that will refuse to tear down.
00:53:01:33 – 00:53:04:44
Chris Webster
Because I remember that when I was a kid. Get out of here.
00:53:04:51 – 00:53:32:36
Agent Palmer
No, I, I look, you’re not wrong. I mean, I, I grew up in a small town, and I drove through it a few years ago. Maybe the stores have changed, but the buildings are, you know, like like I, I if I fell asleep here and woke up there in 20 years, I still expect that. Okay. I won’t recognize the names of the stores, but the I’ll recognize the town like it’s it’s just.
00:53:32:36 – 00:54:03:12
Agent Palmer
Okay. That’s all right. Yeah. Like, it hasn’t changed one iota. And the sad part is, growing up there 20, 30 years ago for as we speak now, I got to look at pictures from 50 years prior. Same buildings, different story, same building. Like none of that stuff has changed. And, you know, hey, look, we don’t know what is at the bottom of the Jetsons world, which was the future we were all promised.
00:54:03:12 – 00:54:11:23
Agent Palmer
Right? So maybe below the clouds, it is nothing but mid-century hotels that nobody wanted to tear down.
00:54:11:28 – 00:54:13:14
Chris Webster
They had to move into space. They had no idea.
00:54:13:14 – 00:54:16:33
Agent Palmer
Where else to go. Yeah, absolutely.
00:54:16:38 – 00:54:34:08
Chris Webster
Yeah. And that’s that’s what’s interesting, too. I was, in we spent the last, until we moved into an RV back in June. We spent the last ten, 11 years in Reno, Nevada. Now, neither my wife or our from there, but we spent a significant amount of time there. And at some point, I did join a group I was asked to join.
00:54:34:08 – 00:55:07:09
Chris Webster
That’s, there was a physical group there that was meeting all about, basically preserving the mid-century modern hotels in Reno, which is why I use that as a specific example, because Reno Reno really explodes during that time period in history. Right? Before that, it was still kind of a dusty cow town. And at some point after Vegas exploded, well, kind of around the same time, Reno really blew up with all that, too, and all these hotels and the the road between, you know, going south and then coming over from the mountains from Sacramento and San Francisco, a lot of travelers coming through those hotels just blew up.
00:55:07:09 – 00:55:23:45
Chris Webster
And they are iconic hotels. I mean, that whole look with, the angular signs and the neon and just the, the mid-century modern look, it is super cool. Don’t get me wrong, but you can’t repurpose every single one of them, right? You can’t repurpose all of them. And I was I kept thinking, you know, I was kind of just join this group.
00:55:23:45 – 00:55:39:33
Chris Webster
They met on a couple Sundays and then they kind of fizzled out. And but everybody was talking about how we need to preserve the, like, iconic look of Reno, the Reno of the past. And we need to preserve that in some way, even if it’s in new buildings that incorporate those older elements or repurposing these old buildings as something else.
00:55:39:33 – 00:55:59:31
Chris Webster
There was a there was a mid-century modern hotel in Sacramento. That was they have all this, repurposed, older but refurbished furniture and things like that, and they made it a co-working space or something, or office building instead of a hotel. And that looks really cool, right? So there’s, there’s those things. But I was like, which version of Reno are you choosing to preserve?
00:55:59:31 – 00:56:15:04
Chris Webster
Why don’t you preserve the version that’s 150 years ago, where it’s teepees next to the river? Oh, wait. We kicked out the Native Americans and we made our own version of Reno. So how about the old huts that the miners would live in? You know, when they would come to the big city, by the water? Now, we don’t like that one either.
00:56:15:04 – 00:56:35:47
Chris Webster
Okay, well, how about the 1920s and 30s when, you know, the divorce industry was really kicking off and people were coming there to get married and divorced and these little houses were going up? Oh, we don’t like that version either. Let me. Which version do you choose to say? This is iconic Reno of the past. You know, and then you look at any town and you say, why are we choosing to hang on to a slice of time?
00:56:35:47 – 00:56:50:59
Chris Webster
Why can’t we just remember, preserve and record that slice of time, preserve digitally? Or, you know, in, you know, photographs and things like that? Why do we need to physically hang on to it? It’s such a weird thing as humans. Do. You know what I mean? Look, it’s weird physically. Hang on.
00:56:51:04 – 00:57:17:08
Agent Palmer
I’ve been systematically purging my house to make room. Like I’ve been unemployed for so long. It’s like I need something to do. Because clearly, writing and podcasting is not enough for me. But, like, I have been, like, I like having space. I was a packrat for a very long time. I’m not. I wouldn’t consider myself that now because I’m trying to get rid of things.
00:57:17:08 – 00:57:45:23
Agent Palmer
But. Yeah, but why, why why do I have this book report from seventh grade? What? Why? And even at that point, if we want to talk about digital, I could just use a scanner and get like and keep it for posterity. For what? For whatever reason, I would want to keep that. I don’t need a there’s no earthly reason to keep a physical copy of it.
00:57:45:27 – 00:58:00:50
Agent Palmer
Like, if I’m going to keep it that that’s fine. And we can argue about how crazy that is anyway. But to be like, well, I have to have the physical copy. What? Why? Like, yeah, why sure.
00:58:00:55 – 00:58:27:57
Chris Webster
That was you’re totally right. And I, I’ve moved a lot in my life. And, you know, prior to us, my wife and I living in Reno, she’s an archeologist, too. We actually were on the road for over a year. I think it was a year and a half or so. You know, we put all our stuff in storage, and when you, when you live on the road doing archeology, you realize, man, all that stuff I have in storage, like, what the hell is that for?
00:58:27:57 – 00:58:44:28
Chris Webster
I’ve been a year and a half without it so far. Why do I have it? And then you get to a house or something. And we brought all our stuff with us. You put it all in there, you get more stuff, you throw stuff away, you get more stuff. And in Reno, in the ten years we were there, we moved, I think 3 or 4 times, for various reasons.
00:58:44:28 – 00:59:03:59
Chris Webster
And this very last time when we bought the RV, in June, we went out for six weeks just to kind of make sure that this is the kind of thing we wanted to do, because it was all a little bit hasty, the way it kind of went down. And then we said, yeah, this is great. We came back and we have three weeks basically to empty out our townhouse that we owned, and we ended up renting that.
00:59:03:59 – 00:59:17:58
Chris Webster
So we’ve got a renter in there now, but we sold our furniture, we threw stuff away, we gave stuff away. We kept very few things. So there’s a handful of things that we kept just because the way for me, the way that I want to get rid of those is a little bit different and needs to be a little more selective.
00:59:17:58 – 00:59:38:34
Chris Webster
But and I just didn’t have the time. So we’re going to actually do that this summer at least I am. My wife’s got some things she just couldn’t get rid of, but this was the first move and the first purge where I got rid of stuff that, for whatever psychological reason, was hard to get rid of. Like, I mean, I dumped, I dumped yearbooks, you mentioned, you know, a book report or something like that.
00:59:38:34 – 00:59:53:05
Chris Webster
I had to like a story that I wrote. I dumped that back when I was like six or whatever. I mean, I was like, why am I hanging on to this stuff? Is any of the things that I’m looking at right now some. Is it important just to me, or is it going to be important to someone else or humanity when I die?
00:59:53:10 – 01:00:00:01
Chris Webster
If the answer is no and it’s just important to me, it’s going in the trash right now. Yeah. Because I’m, I’m because I don’t care.
01:00:00:10 – 01:00:21:41
Agent Palmer
So I’ve been and I think I wrote about it, you know, for me it’s been not like a great purge, but it’s been a consistent purge. And I challenge myself to be like five items a day. Is my is my my minimum. Right. And it’s not throw five things away. It’s either get rid of or put away five items.
01:00:21:41 – 01:00:47:28
Agent Palmer
So for me it could also be like, yeah, taking a bookshelf and being like, all right, well this book goes over here, right? This doesn’t belong here. Or like, okay, I found I made space on the bookshelf. So that way all of my books are vertical instead of stacked every which way, stuffed into a bookshelf. Right. And and you get rid of a few things and you make a little bit of room and it’s easy how these things pile up.
01:00:47:28 – 01:01:12:02
Agent Palmer
And so it’s been slowly. But what’s funny is I’ve been doing this for like a year and a half now, and it doesn’t seem like I’m ever going to stop. Like I keep finding more stuff. And I’ll admit, for better or worse, like, I’ve avoided that drawer. I’ve avoided that closet. Right? Like just that box right there.
01:01:12:02 – 01:01:26:52
Agent Palmer
I really should go through it at some point. But now, I don’t I don’t want to like. But but I know that by challenging myself at a certain point, I have to go through that drawer and then, you go, well, I skipped a bunch of stuff in that drawer, so I’ll go back to it or whatever.
01:01:26:52 – 01:01:48:15
Agent Palmer
Like, I know I understand completely, and I in the process of getting rid of stuff and then just challenging myself to keep doing it, to make more space. And it’s not space for more stuff. It’s just space to live. Space to work. In doing this, I’ve kept my desk the cleanest it’s ever been in my entire life.
01:01:48:20 – 01:01:52:38
Agent Palmer
It’s amazing what it’s like to work without piles.
01:01:52:43 – 01:01:53:57
Chris Webster
It’s just.
01:01:54:02 – 01:02:01:57
Agent Palmer
It, isn’t it? It’s fantastic. But I agree. Yeah. Like, I need to change my own mindset a bit. There.
01:02:02:02 – 01:02:26:51
Chris Webster
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Imagine where the world would be if everyone did that. Right. We’ve got I just traveling around the country for the past, well, almost my whole career, but specifically for the past, you know, since June or so of 2020, you see, you see the same thing over and over again. You see houses in rural areas that are just there’s junk everywhere outside, right?
01:02:26:51 – 01:02:45:22
Chris Webster
It gets to the point where you just can’t clean it up. It’s just too much. And then you see storage facility upon storage facility upon storage facility that is full of things that people just couldn’t give away. They couldn’t give it up. They couldn’t they. It’s like I’m gonna actually pay every month to store this garbage that I just can’t throw away.
01:02:45:22 – 01:03:04:11
Chris Webster
It’s actual garbage, and I can’t put it in the trash. And that’s what I’m going to do with it. And it’s just, I don’t know, it’s phenomenal the way that that works in the human, the human psyche. And, you know, to your point about working on a nice, clean desk, I was just telling somebody today, one of the things I love about working in the RV, oh, is one of my colleagues.
01:03:04:11 – 01:03:18:39
Chris Webster
She’s like, oh, my office is a complete, you know, it’s complete trash right now. I’ve got stuff everywhere. And I’m like, you know what? That’s the nice thing about living in RV. My office is my front right passenger seat and it may get that way over the week or two weeks at most of that. We’re in a location.
01:03:18:43 – 01:03:36:08
Chris Webster
But I’ll tell you what, my wife’s got to sit here when we start driving. So I got to clean everything up, get all the way, like every week or two. I’m forced to do a hard reset. Yeah. And I love it. So yeah, it’s great. The whole house is like that too. We might let some stuff go. We might put some stuff on the counter.
01:03:36:08 – 01:03:54:14
Chris Webster
We might put some stuff on the downside here. But I’ll tell you what, when it’s moving day, everything goes away. Because if you don’t, I mean, you’re in a low level, sustained earthquake for the next seven hours driving and everything’s going to be on the floor and destroyed. So you have to put everything away. It has to go in its place, and you’re forced to do that every week or two.
01:03:54:14 – 01:03:59:55
Chris Webster
And I love it.
01:04:00:00 – 01:04:04:33
Agent Palmer
You.
01:04:04:38 – 01:04:36:38
Agent Palmer
Sentimentality and the ability to remember things has so little to do with physical objects that we hold on to these things on the off chance that we might one day forget why they are important to us. But on a whole, I find that that can be complete and utter nonsense. As someone who has been constantly purging to reduce the clutter in my life, there are plenty of things that I have no earthly understanding of what it ever meant to me.
01:04:36:42 – 01:05:04:03
Agent Palmer
And yet, conversely, I can fondly remember the bikes I rode that I no longer have, or the shoes that I used to run competitive cross-country or track in during high school that I also no longer have. We find ourselves trapped because physical things are supposed to mean something. But the more I go through things and the more conversations I have like the one you just heard, the more I’m thankful for the memories.
01:05:04:08 – 01:05:30:14
Agent Palmer
Look, I’m not Marie Kondo and I’m not Chris Webster either, though it seems like the RV life suits not only him, but his lifestyle. But I am a proponent of less clutter. Perhaps it is because I have too much time on my hands, but it could also be that some years back I remember losing my last two grandparents, my mother’s mom and my dad’s dad, and those deaths were within a year or two of each other.
01:05:30:14 – 01:05:58:48
Agent Palmer
And going through what had remained from their lives, especially without the benefit of them being there to identify the value, even if they happened to remember if there was any stuck with me. And I know my parents were similarly affected because they too have been downsizing. Not for any other reason other than to declutter. Again, I’m not saying to throw everything away, but do you really need to hold on to every single thing from your past?
01:05:58:53 – 01:06:20:13
Agent Palmer
What value does the physical thing hold? And is the memory tarnished because you can’t hold that thing in your hand anymore? Think about that. That’s all I’m saying. Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 45. As a reminder, all links are available in the show notes. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays.
01:06:20:26 – 01:06:55:09
Agent Palmer
If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can tweet me at Agent Palmer, my guest, Chris Webster at Akio Web. That’s Akio o Webby, Digg Tech at Digg Tech LLC, the Archeology Podcast Network at Arc Pod Net, and this show at The Palmer Files. You can get all of Chris’s particulars at Digg Tech LLC, dot com or Pro podcast now.com or Arc Pod Netcom, all of which will continue to lead you to Chris or Chris adjacent things.
01:06:55:14 – 01:07:07:08
Agent Palmer
My writings and rantings can be found on Agent palmer.com. An email can be sent to the Palmer files at gmail.com.
01:07:07:13 – 01:07:48:19
Unknown
01:07:48:24 – 01:07:50:44
Agent Palmer
All right. Chris, do you have one final question for me?
01:07:50:51 – 01:08:08:25
Chris Webster
Yes, I do so if you lived in the world or universe of Ready Player One, and you were spending all of your time in the Oasis, what would be the planet you spent the most time on? And it could be a planet that either you read about in the books, or obviously you can make up whatever you want.
01:08:08:39 – 01:08:14:25
Chris Webster
What fictional digital, you know, crazy planet would you live on in the Oasis?
01:08:14:30 – 01:08:40:53
Agent Palmer
So I feel like, there’s a few there’s a few options for me, because obviously in the Oasis, like, you get to feel everything, but, you know, you’re safe, right? Like, that’s the the the appeal of the Oasis in the Ready Player one world, to me, is like, I could live in the Shire without the fear of the dark Lord.
01:08:40:58 – 01:09:04:42
Agent Palmer
Like that’s the appeal. Yeah. Or, you know, you could you can go to Endor and not have to worry about the Empire. Right. You know, so I feel like it would probably be one of those, Yeah. I mean, I probably spend a lot of time in, like, that, like Hobbiton type, or like indoor.
01:09:04:44 – 01:09:29:27
Agent Palmer
Like up in the trees, like, probably nature. Like I’m not a real nature guy. But in the digital realm, I. There would be no reason not to, like, I, I feel like, and, you know, maybe my brain’s overthinking it because immediately I go like, well, it’s it’s like the fake nature. So, and there are different variations of each of them.
01:09:29:27 – 01:09:52:38
Agent Palmer
Like, if I remember correctly from the book, there were like, different variations of different things. So, like, there would be. Yeah. You know, Star Wars has multiple cannons at this point, arguably or not. That’s the way it is. And there would be like a world or a universe for each cannon where, you know, this is true in this one and this is not true in another.
01:09:52:43 – 01:10:13:25
Agent Palmer
And I just feel like that would be I would just go to the place where it’d be like it. It’s just pretty, and I don’t have to worry about bugs or, you know, it’s you know what I mean? Like, just that would be the place, and, and I feel like it would probably be like a Hobbiton type scenario, because that feels the most peaceful to me now.
01:10:13:25 – 01:10:55:41
Agent Palmer
I wouldn’t stay there like, I would have an issue just being there permanently. There’s, there’s a part and I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s a part and I think Ready Player two I think it’s ready player two where they go to the Prince world. Yeah. Which is all. So I feel like I would spend a lot of time just going to like, different artists worlds, like go to Aerosmith world, go to Rolling Stones world, like go back to like, you know, Little Richard world, like, I feel like I could do that where it’d be like, just walk down the street and like different albums on each street or however
01:10:55:41 – 01:11:07:07
Agent Palmer
they set it up. Yeah, I think I, I’m not a big travel guy, but in a digital sense, I would, be all over travel in the Oasis, I think. I think that’s.
01:11:07:07 – 01:11:07:40
Chris Webster
Nice.
01:11:07:40 – 01:11:11:34
Agent Palmer
That’s. I mean, what do you have one?
01:11:11:39 – 01:11:30:49
Chris Webster
Well, I think I would much like our discussion of games earlier. One of the big reasons I’m not a big gamer is because I would go all in. You know what I mean? Like, I would just lose myself in whatever the thing was. And in that world, I mean, you were already in the books and it seems like, you know, especially in the second book.
01:11:30:53 – 01:11:48:00
Chris Webster
I mean, let’s just assume you’ve seen them at least seen the movie at this point. And, you know, they win the whole thing and become billionaires. But, in the second book, they don’t have to work per se, because you know, they could spend all their time in the way system. I feel like I feel like I’m, I, I’m trying to be realistic with it, like, where would I want to go?
01:11:48:00 – 01:12:07:02
Chris Webster
But realistically, if I had to not work ever. And I could just be there all the time, I think I would, I would want to spend years really, living in a certain way, like you mentioned the Hobbit world. Sure, absolutely. I would love to live like that. But also like Star Trek. Like, I would love to just be a bridge officer.
01:12:07:04 – 01:12:27:36
Chris Webster
Not even like the captain. But I like to just be like a bridge officer on a Star Trek ship. Not even really the enterprise, maybe, but in like the Star Trek sector and just living that life for a little while and going through and having evaluations, you know, and just like being a person in that world and living, living that way.
01:12:27:41 – 01:12:54:57
Chris Webster
But that goes that goes back to the obsession. You know, I like I like doing that kind of stuff. I, I keep telling my wife, if we ever get to the point where we can do this, I can already work digitally. But time zones are an issue because all my clients are in, you know, North America. And but I want to put the RV in storage for a year, and I want to go to Europe and Eastern Europe and, you know, like, Scandinavia and spend like a month or two in an Airbnb at a time, you know, because I don’t want to spend a weekend.
01:12:54:57 – 01:13:10:37
Chris Webster
I don’t want to spend a week. I want to go there and spend a month, two months, you know, live in a city, live in the town, do something, and then move to a different one and and experience things like that. And I think I would treat the something like the Oasis exactly the same way if I had the ability to.
01:13:10:41 – 01:13:18:53
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I, I agree. Yeah be great.
01:13:18:58 – 01:13:46:39
Chris Webster
Yeah it’ll be fun. I hesitate with some of the stuff though. Like like the Prince planet and the some of the other ones. They are created by people who may or may not have been alive during the actual time of that person, which it’s not, pre-qualification, but they are computer generated, which means people generated. Yeah. And unless we got to the point where we could just feed an AI a whole bunch of data and it created what it thought the world would look like, that would be interesting.
01:13:46:39 – 01:13:51:30
Chris Webster
But in the end, the quests and the things, they’re all still just created by people. Yeah, well.
01:13:51:31 – 01:14:27:40
Agent Palmer
I think part of it. But, you know, I look at it like this, I’ve been I’ve been listening to the scrubs rewatch podcast, and watching that show and watching along with them, I should say, and the difference in detail that, like, they might remember for the set or that’s in the wiki or that’s wrong in the wiki, the amount of detail that we have and what we I mean, it goes back to like what we hold on to, the details that we remember or that are important to us.
01:14:27:45 – 01:14:29:51
Agent Palmer
We don’t know why.
01:14:29:56 – 01:14:31:31
Chris Webster
Yeah. Good point.
01:14:31:31 – 01:14:49:52
Agent Palmer
So I feel like I don’t know if I can really do it. You can be a fan. I think a fan would be or a fan. Yeah, I don’t know. You need a level. There’s a level. There’s a quality assurance that needs to go on. For sure.
01:14:49:57 – 01:14:50:56
Chris Webster
Yeah, I mean, did.
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).