Comments on: Chatrooms from the 1980s

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By: Dinna

Dinna — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:23:45 +0000

I just googled "Free access network" and found this blog site. Oh how you brought back the memories! I was only 9 years old at the time, and was taught how to call FAN by my older brother who was a total computer geek (and is now still into the computers, but a lot less of the geek). It was an amazing place, and allowed me a social outlet unlike anything found in my classroom. I remember another user proposing to me by sending me an engagement ring made of "x"s in an email, which I printed out and kept with me. I still remember his user name- "Navigator". The FAN users once had a meetup at High Park, and I remember being devastated that I wasn't allowed to go and meet my suitor. LOL! Oh the memories.. Thanks again.

By: Tim Wu

Tim Wu — Fri, 05 May 2006 05:45:48 +0000

Those were funny typos, whoops.

By: john

john — Thu, 04 May 2006 10:52:25 +0000

Among the lost histories of computer-mediated communication are the on-line communities of pre-dialup-BBS systems of the 1970s. I am thinking, for example, of the people who used the X,TALK and PPC systems at the University of Minnesota on their CDC Cyber 6600 system. 10s of users could engage in simultaneous text chat. They used pseudonymous handles. They connected from remote locations across Wisconisn, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. There were even hacker-originated e-mail systems such as +WRITE+. There was at least one teenaged "tribe" called "Various Users" that understood themselves as a group tied together by the interactions of their on-line personae. To be sure, these programs did not run on the Internet, but they facilitated geographically-disbursed real-time communication.

Many of the features we associate with contemporary on-line communication were present in this era.

This is a sitting duck for a chapter in someone's doctoral thesis on the origins of computer-mediated communication. There was some discussion long ago on David Bennahum's old cpsr-history e-mail list, but these events are still lost in the great backward of time.

By: Mind Booster Noori

Mind Booster Noori — Thu, 04 May 2006 08:02:58 +0000

Hi there, and thanks for giving me a very good description on why I still love talkers, and why I think there's something magical in such an old form of communication that we can't see in nowadays internet applications...

By: Nicholas Cotton

Nicholas Cotton — Wed, 03 May 2006 21:50:40 +0000

So called cyberspace communications (chat boards, FAN, the Well, etc) are well suited to self government and self policing of anti-social behavior. The problem, on the other hand, is in online mediums where the reward for misbehaving is higher, then the model fails because people are willing to put in the effort to achieve their anti-social or criminal goals. Once you start doing real world commerce online, you start needing real world policing as well.

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Wed, 03 May 2006 16:34:31 +0000

...a power not dulled by the druggery of dating...

So you're accustomed to slipping your dates a Roofie? I think you may have misspelled "drudgery" and I only point it because it's a funny slip.

PS: BBSs were fun.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 03 May 2006 16:20:53 +0000

A decade or so ago, when the Internet was first hitting broad public awareness, I used to try to explain it to various groups. I'd have lines like "There is no such thing as "cyberspace" - it's only people communicating with each other".

I think the flower phrasing, of "place", while great for poets, has deeply misled much of the community to very naive ways of thinking. Kind of like "Woodstock Nation", from an earlier era. Though that doesn't make me popular with the poets.

P.S.: You miswrote "Eldred v. Reno" for "ACLU v. Reno".

By: Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 03 May 2006 06:55:05 +0000

God, I loved that BBS.