I just finished watching the BBS documentary that was filmed by Jason Scott of textfiles.org fame. It took me a while to get through it all considering its 3 DVDs chock full of interviews. It really is an amazing story and a real important piece of computer history. BBSs were the blogs of their day.
It really brought back some memories how I got my start in BBSs back in the early 90s. I always had computers through high school and college, but I never had a modem until 1991 when I received a hand-me-down IBM 286 with a 20mb hard drive. That was cool and all (no more swapping floppies when I wanted to spell check my WordPerfect documents!) . But the big news was the Hayes 2400 baud modem that came with it! Now the world was at my fingertips. I soon discovered the world of BBSs and started calling every local number I could find! This was our only connection to the online world until we got our AOL account in 1994. This is about the time that the Internet started to take hold and marked the death toll for the BBSs.
I highly recommend this documentary for anyone interested in the evolution of computer networking and software development .
Here's a breakdown of the episodes:
Baud introduces the story of the beginning of the BBS, including interviews with Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who used a snowstorm as an inspiration to change the world.
Sysops and Users introduces the stories of the people who used BBSes, and lets them tell their own stories of living in this new world.
Make it Pay covers the BBS industry that rose in the 1980's and grew to fantastic heights before disappearing almost overnight.
Fidonet covers the largest volunteer-run computer network in history, and the people who made it a joy and a political nightmare.
Artscene tells the rarely-heard history of the ANSI Art Scene that thrived in the BBS world, where art was currency and battles waged over nothing more than pure talent.
HPAC (Hacking Phreaking Anarchy Cracking) hears from some of the users of "underground"
BBSes and their unique view of the world of information and computers.
Compression tells the story of the PKWARE/SEA legal battle of the late 1980s and how a fight that broke out over something as simple as data compression resulted in waylaid lives and lost opportunity.
No Carrier wishes a fond farewell to the dial-up BBS and its integration into the Internet.
It really brought back some memories how I got my start in BBSs back in the early 90s. I always had computers through high school and college, but I never had a modem until 1991 when I received a hand-me-down IBM 286 with a 20mb hard drive. That was cool and all (no more swapping floppies when I wanted to spell check my WordPerfect documents!) . But the big news was the Hayes 2400 baud modem that came with it! Now the world was at my fingertips. I soon discovered the world of BBSs and started calling every local number I could find! This was our only connection to the online world until we got our AOL account in 1994. This is about the time that the Internet started to take hold and marked the death toll for the BBSs.
I highly recommend this documentary for anyone interested in the evolution of computer networking and software development .
Here's a breakdown of the episodes:
Baud introduces the story of the beginning of the BBS, including interviews with Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who used a snowstorm as an inspiration to change the world.
Sysops and Users introduces the stories of the people who used BBSes, and lets them tell their own stories of living in this new world.
Make it Pay covers the BBS industry that rose in the 1980's and grew to fantastic heights before disappearing almost overnight.
Fidonet covers the largest volunteer-run computer network in history, and the people who made it a joy and a political nightmare.
Artscene tells the rarely-heard history of the ANSI Art Scene that thrived in the BBS world, where art was currency and battles waged over nothing more than pure talent.
HPAC (Hacking Phreaking Anarchy Cracking) hears from some of the users of "underground"
BBSes and their unique view of the world of information and computers.
Compression tells the story of the PKWARE/SEA legal battle of the late 1980s and how a fight that broke out over something as simple as data compression resulted in waylaid lives and lost opportunity.
No Carrier wishes a fond farewell to the dial-up BBS and its integration into the Internet.
No comments:
Post a Comment