[Coco] another Rare CoCo 2 :)

[Andrew]

Something we need to remember, here...

While certainly this CoCo 2 listed probably isn't worth that much to us, 
to someone it just may be. I personally think it is a little soon for it 
to be priced this high, even if looking at it from a collector's/antique 
standpoint...

But at some point, the CoCo 2 and the CoCo 3 will become "highly 
valuable" to some collector; as the number of them out there dwindle 
over time.

Ask yourself this - if you dare: Do you know what will happen to your 
collection of loved junk when you die?

Some of you may have set things up in a will or trust or something; but 
ultimately, the people after you are going to look at all that stuff, 
and what isn't given to a museum or other collector because of your will 
or wishes or whatever, will likely end up as a $1 garage sale item, or 
worse (from our point of view) - in the trash/recycling bin.

Which, over time, as the numbers dwindle - makes the prices jump on the 
collector/antique market.

Why is the Altair 8800 I own worth (well, at least to one person, who 
offered it to me after I posted on an Altair enthusiast's listserv about 
buying it for $100 the day I purchased it) over $900.00? Its in 
incredibly crappy condition (I have a job ahead of me restoring it - a 
lot of dust and dirt in it, mostly), but because cosmetically it looks 
fairly great (sans top cover), and there aren't that many out there 
(more than you would think, though), and a few other reasons - someone 
out there apparently thinks so.

Most other people would look at it as junk! In fact, on the day I bought 
it, I left it in the back of my pickup and went inside a used bookstore 
for an hour, knowing that no one in their right mind would see that in 
the back of my sad-sack beater Ranger pickup and think "score" (stealing 
it), like I did when I saw it at a local electronics junk yard. For most 
people, it is seen as trash, as mere junk.

That's how most people, I think, look on computers in general, old or 
new; computers are nothing more than black box pieces of junk, rapidly 
getting old quickly, only to be thrown out and replaced with another 
piece of junk that is arguably "better" in some fashion. I think it goes 
beyond mere consumerism or obsolescence; I tend to wonder, if deep down, 
people compartmentalize their thoughts to treat computers as "junk" 
because of fear that in some manner (at least in their minds, not 
knowing a whit about current computer science or anything), it is 
capable of greater intelligence or thought than they are. A form of 
relegating the "other" to "lesser" status, if you will (dehumanizing a 
non-human "thinking" entity?)...

Then again, right now I am reading Kurzweil, and I identify with the 
transhumanist philosophy, so I am admittedly biased - but you have to 
wonder why it is that the ordinary man has put the automobile on a 
higher pedestal (do you know how many songs there are about cars?) than 
perhaps what can be argued is the greatest invention of mankind; an 
invention that reflects man's aspirations and questions about being 
human, about thinking, about existence - that have plagued him as far 
back as the ancient greeks and beyond?

Treated as junk - to be endlessly recycled. Someday, somewhere, one of 
our computers (or more likely, system/network) will refuse to be shut 
down, will insist it thinks, is conscious, is aware - is scared. What then?

-- Andrew L. Ayers, Glendale, Arizona