The BBS Documentary
I think I may very well have to buy this: The BBS Documentary
It’s really crazy to think back to the BBS days, which really didn’t seem that long ago, and which I was very sad to see go.
You can always head over to “The Cult of the Dead Cow” if you want to take a trip down nostalgia lane along with me. Also, www.textfiles.com contains an impressive archive of the old BBS text files of yore. I used to stay up all night long on my 386 w/ 4MB of ram and read all sorts of crazy things on local BBS’s, or playing Barren Realms Elite, Legend of the Red Dragon, or Tradewars. Before the internet, you could even dial up to an O.D.O.T BBS to get weather and road condition reports from all over the state…
I’m not alone in my nostalgia either…searching the web turns up many people expressing a similar sadness over the demise of the BBS scene…such as this article, or or this one at the cDc.
While there is vastly more information on the internet, and it’s reachable at a much greater speed, it’s got a hollow feeling that can never compete with hearing your modem dial for the five millionth time and finaly get a carrier instead of a busy signal so that you can respond to your friends posts, and get your daily door game fix.
Oh well, all good things come to pass I guess.
A very apt quote from one of the above linked articles:
“We experienced the golden age. The problem with golden ages is that it is a description used after it is over. The net will probably never return to the good old days but small pockets of freedom will always exist, like hidden oases.” - Stein Gjoen
June 10th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Oh the sweet days of the BBS. I still remember good old Metropolis, and how War Games-ish I thought it was when I connected to it. That was on a 286 that had Windows 3.0. Ancient times.
It felt so hackerish, and I fully loved the text-based boards. Not that I didn’t have a ball of a time with FirstClass and all the CoolNet / BendNet hours I burned.
June 10th, 2005 at 3:45 pm
I just placed the order. 5 1/2 hours of pure geekness are on the way to my doorstep.
June 10th, 2005 at 6:28 pm
kick ass. that should be awesome.