http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a16014/history-of-the-bbs-documentar y/

You should check it out. Maybe we can have a discussion about its accuracies.

"BBSes informed how the internet looked and felt." as the author writes in the article. Is that really the case? They look completly different.

Why does the author call Jason Scott's movie "deep technology mythology"? That movie has a lot of first hand interviews, wouldn't it be fact?


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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Electrosys to All on Thu Jun 25 2015 02:07 am

You should check it out. Maybe we can have a discussion about its
accuracies. "BBSes informed how the internet looked and felt." as the
author writes in the article. Is that really the case? They look
completly different.

Why does the author call Jason Scott's movie "deep technology
mythology"? That movie has a lot of first hand interviews, wouldn't it
be fact?

'cause the person writing the piece on PM is a tool? 'The internet' != 'web browser'. FTP, Telnet, gopher, WAIS, etc. There were protocols and interfaces for doing information retrieval before Tim Berners Lee came around.

People who've been exposed to the show Mythbusters may jump right to the definition of myth as something that is provably not true or feasible. But there is also the definition of things being larger than life in retrospect.

For example: 'an exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing: the book is a scholarly study of the Churchill myth.'

I could see that 'the BBS myth' would work with that definition. The idea that it seems greater in retrospect than it actually was.

My brother gets that 'tude from time to time about anything styled after 8-bit. I get that way from time to time about anything involving Microsoft products.

[BN]

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine
By: Electrosys to All on Thu Jun 25 2015 03:07 am

"BBSes informed how the internet looked and felt." as the author writes in t article. Is that really the case? They look completly different.

This was pretty much true if you don't confuse the internet with the World Wide Web. Commands like talk, who, ff, ls and other commands have analogs in the BBS world. You could "chat" with other users, "text" them, Rlogin systems, ftp and in many cases you still can. Just unplug your mouse and touchscreen and find out.

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Binary Ninja to Electrosys on Thu Jun 25 2015 10:05:02

accuracies. "BBSes informed how the internet looked and felt." as
the author writes in the article. Is that really the case? They look
completly different.

There was a certain crossover. I don't know that it was so much BBSes
informing the look and feel of the internet so much as that there was an overlapping contributing user base between the two. The web certainly felt way different than local boards at the time though.

Why does the author call Jason Scott's movie "deep technology
mythology"? That movie has a lot of first hand interviews, wouldn't
it be fact?

I think he's using the word more as a literary tool to imply a vastness of information and narrative rather than to imply falsehood. I don't think I'd have chosen that word though.

I could see that 'the BBS myth' would work with that definition. The idea that it seems greater in retrospect than it actually was.

I don't know. BBSing was a pretty huge and important step in technology, not neccessarily for the technical achievements (although there were a number), but from the perspective that they were the first real online experience available to the masses, and arguably primed us for the rapid explosion of the web.

.
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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Electrosys to All on Thu Jun 25 2015 02:07 am

Why does the author call Jason Scott's movie "deep technology mythology"? That movie has a lot of first hand interviews, wouldn't it be fact?

as i said before, the bbs doc had a few of jason scott's friends taking up all the face time. there was very little fact.

it was his first documentary so i'll cut him some slack, but dont glorify it.

i think rob swindell, wayne bell , and a few others only had SECONDS in the bbs documentary.
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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine
By: Tempo Rubato to Electrosys on Thu Jun 25 2015 04:31 pm

This was pretty much true if you don't confuse the internet with the World Wide Web. Commands like talk, who, ff, ls and other commands have analogs in the BBS world. You could "chat" with other users, "text" them, Rlogin systems, ftp and in many cases you still can. Just unplug your mouse and touchscreen and find out.

The IMPs ran from 1960-1989? Ward put his BBS online in 1978?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Message_Processor https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ward_Christensen

So an argument could be made that BBS were copying work-alike stuff from arpanet.

[BN]

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Underminer to Binary Ninja on Thu Jun 25 2015 04:09 pm

I could see that 'the BBS myth' would work with that definition. The
idea that it seems greater in retrospect than it actually was.

I don't know. BBSing was a pretty huge and important step in technology, not neccessarily for the technical achievements (although there were a number), but from the perspective that they were the first real online experience available to the masses, and arguably primed us for the rapid explosion of the web.

For me, the BBS embodied the idea of connected computing. Something that made the home computer more like the minis of the time.

Once boards started joining message or bulletins forarding networks, that was even more true.

[BN]

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine
By: Binary Ninja to Tempo Rubato on Thu Jun 25 2015 08:12 pm

This was pretty much true if you don't confuse the internet with the Wo Wide Web. Commands like talk, who, ff, ls and other commands have anal in the BBS world. You could "chat" with other users, "text" them, Rlog systems, ftp and in many cases you still can. Just unplug your mouse a touchscreen and find out.

The IMPs ran from 1960-1989? Ward put his BBS online in 1978?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Message_Processor https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ward_Christensen

So an argument could be made that BBS were copying work-alike stuff from arpanet.

The statement to which I was replying was "BBSes informed how the internet looked." That isn't stating that they established the concept. There were Arpanet connected computers in the 60's but they were pretty much restricted. I worked for the department of defense in the late 60's and computers of the time were pretty much mainframes. Although I wrote programs for them, few had console access in those days. In fact, most of the computers were stand alone although when minicomputers rolled around, there was some degree of messaging available. In the early 80's DoD even used commercial email systems that offered conversion to snail mail where required. When personal computers rolled around in the 80's, they were difficult to justify as they were expensive and frankly not that useful to most. Without interconnectivity, there was no email. Early PC's did not routinely come equiped with modems. In the late 80's we created a BBS dedicated to supporting our programs. That was the closest we got to IMPs until broadband became commonplace years later.

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Underminer to Binary Ninja on Thu Jun 25 2015 04:09 pm

There was a certain crossover. I don't know that it was so much BBSes informing the look and feel of the internet so much as that there was an overlapping contributing user base between the two. The web certainly felt way different than local boards at the time though.

As soon as the internet started taking off, the cool kids got shell accounts and were discovering usenet -- and taunting the folks left on FTN.

I spent a lot of time in PINE and tin, but still liked BBS interfaces more.

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Mro to Electrosys on Thu Jun 25 2015 10:38 pm

it was his first documentary so i'll cut him some slack, but dont glorify it.

If you don't like his documentary, make your own. Personally, I think it's high time for a followup.

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine
By: Tempo Rubato to Binary Ninja on Fri Jun 26 2015 08:18 am

This was pretty much true if you don't confuse the internet with
the Wo Wide Web. Commands like talk, who, ff, ls and other
commands have anal in the BBS world. You could "chat" with other
users, "text" them, Rlog systems, ftp and in many cases you still
can. Just unplug your mouse a touchscreen and find out.

The IMPs ran from 1960-1989? Ward put his BBS online in 1978?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Message_Processor
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ward_Christensen

So an argument could be made that BBS were copying work-alike stuff
from arpanet.

The statement to which I was replying was "BBSes informed how the internet looked." That isn't stating that they established the concept. There were Arpanet connected computers in the 60's but they were pretty much restricted. I worked for the department of defense in the late 60's and computers of the time were pretty much mainframes. Although I wrote programs for them, few had console access in those days. In fact, most of the computers were stand alone although when minicomputers rolled around, there was some degree of messaging available. In the early 80's DoD even used commercial email systems that offered conversion to snail mail where required. When personal computers rolled around in the 80's, they were difficult to justify as they were expensive and frankly not that useful to most. Without interconnectivity, there was no email. Early PC's did not routinely come equiped with modems. In the late 80's we created a BBS dedicated to supporting our programs. That was the closest we got to IMPs until broadband became commonplace years later. ---

Thanks for that perspective. It is one I did not have.

I wasn't sure how literally to interpret what the author meant in the piece this thread references.

Anything with PC style fonts, ANSI, and a 80x24 or 80x25 screen is going to look a bit similar. Forgetting for a moment that BBS does not strictly mean PC, it could look quite a bit different for people on different platforms.

[BN]

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Poindexter Fortran to Underminer on Fri Jun 26 2015 01:31 pm

Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Underminer to Binary Ninja on Thu Jun 25 2015 04:09 pm

There was a certain crossover. I don't know that it was so much BBSes informing the look and feel of the internet so much as that there was a

n

overlapping contributing user base between the two. The web certainly f

elt

way different than local boards at the time though.

As soon as the internet started taking off, the cool kids got shell accounts and were discovering usenet -- and taunting the folks left on FTN.

I spent a lot of time in PINE and tin, but still liked BBS interfaces more.

Wow, PINE and Tin. I used to love that stuff. New. Exciting. Cutting edge. Minimalistic. :-)

Mickey
SynchroNET 3.15
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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Mickey to Poindexter Fortran on Fri Jun 26 2015 08:01 pm

I spent a lot of time in PINE and tin, but still liked BBS interfaces
more.

Wow, PINE and Tin. I used to love that stuff. New. Exciting. Cutting edge. Minimalistic. :-)

One of the user communities I'm in still has a colo'd server. The old timers still run Pine and a varation of the UNIX talk command.

[BN]

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Binary Ninja to Mickey on Sat Jun 27 2015 09:54 am

Wow, PINE and Tin. I used to love that stuff. New. Exciting. Cutting
edge. Minimalistic. :-)

One of the user communities I'm in still has a colo'd server. The old timers still run Pine and a varation of the UNIX talk command.

2600 had an article showing how to connect PINE to Microsoft Exchange. IMAP and NNTP, LDAP for the address book. Sweet.

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Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Poindexter Fortran to Mro on Fri Jun 26 2015 01:36 pm

Re: Popular Mechanics Magzine writes about bbses in a recent article.
By: Mro to Electrosys on Thu Jun 25 2015 10:38 pm

it was his first documentary so i'll cut him some slack, but dont glorify it.

If you don't like his documentary, make your own. Personally, I think it's high time for a followup.

why even do a follow up?
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