I went to a talk at the Computer History Museum last night titled
"Dialed In: The Prehistory of Social Media".
Kevin Driscoll, author of the book "Modem Media" and Danah Boyd, author
of "It's Complicated: The social lives of networked teens" made up a
panel with a moderator.
They spoke quite a bit about the dial-up days, touching on the local
flavor dial-up BBSes had, told some stories they'd heard about local
nodes (like the local coffee.net that San Francisco had that brought in
non-computer owners into online communities) and touched on some of the
qualities of the earlier online experience. What I was reminded of was
how exclusive BBSing was - you needed a computer, a modem, and then you
needed to find a way to get your first comms program and find a BBS
phone number list.
Of course, no mention of the fact that BBSes persevere to this day. That
wouldn't fit the narrative...
I went with a group of sysops from the day - Dr. Strangelove (Just Say
Yes), Taipan Enigma (&TOTSE), Zardoz (Burn this Flag) and Destiny,
someone who I met post-BBSes - but is a part of the post-BBS social
scene. It was great catching up with them - although we all had places
to be, kids to pick up from babysitters, work to be done tomorrow, and
long drives home, didn't end up closing down a bar like we'd done in the
past.
... THE SEVEN JOURNEYS TO ITSELFNESS
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