I wanted to share this with you because a) it’s absolutely great and b) because this is something close to my heart and the reason why this forum exists.
If you are younger than 25 or 30 (depending when you first used a computer), you owe it to yourself to watch BBS: The Documentary
It’s an 8-part documentary covering the history of the Bulletin Board System, the precursor to the modern Internet and World Wide Web; when you had to pick up the phone and dial into each forum you wanted to read much like if you had to disconnect and reconnect your modem every time you wanted to change website. Even under heavy technical restrictions and speeds so slow you could read the information as it downloaded, a culture was created that is the modern foundation of our Internet culture today.
I first started out on the Internet in 1996, the year that BBSes simply dropped dead in the face of the Internet, the World Wide Web and AOL. Whilst I never got to live in that world of BBSes, I was always aware of their importance in the infrastructure that I grew up in. During their hey-day 10 years earlier, the demo scene, art scene and hacking scenes were a wild west of home-brew equipment and software solutions, cutting a cultural edge that wouldn’t become commonplace until the rather sterile Facebook appeared on the scene.
I created these forums after reading a Commodore 64 scene diskzine "Recollection" recollection.c64.org which recounted the tales of the truly 1337 pioneers of the day. It’s well worth reading if you have any interest in copy protection, phone hacking and general scene lore.
I wanted to somehow contribute my respect for this era, but even as much as I would love to be able to make a diskzine, there wouldn’t be any meaningful content I could possibly contribute. _My_ scene was the web, always had been. Early forums and web communities. The best I could do was contribute how I knew best, by paying homage to BBSes of yesteryear with my own forum. It took three or four days to build, and the rest is all recorded in the threads right here.