À la recherche du BBS perdu

Thanks to Midnight Tree Bandit I found this fond and dead-on-target remembrance of the BBS days of computing.

I was one of those who first met networked computing over a dial-up connection (1200 “baud—”we didnt call it bps in those days), in 1987.  I spent eight years in BBS-land, and formed some friendships and found some loves there who continue in my life to this day.  I can think of a good dozen Fidonet friends whom I could call cold and get an invitation to visit them, on the spot.

BBSes had another good attribute they gave to their users:  they taught us how to be netizens before we got turned loose in the big, ugly, unmoderated online world.  By the time I started on Usenet I had a good grounding in what was good online behavior, as well as an introduction to flame wars and their peculiar rules—all of which came in very useful as I started posting on Usenet and found out just how nasty people could be in virtual space.

I wish there was still something analogous to the BBS culture (as Wired magazine once said of Fido, “a garage-band version of the Internet”) extant, where newbies could make mistakes and learn the rules without running the risk of being reduced to a cinder, and without having to annoy the world at large with their juvenilia.  It might make for a more civilized Internet, that way.

A suicidal relative took control of the Super Bowl.  Fnord.