The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media by Kevin Driscoll

Author:Kevin Driscoll [Driscoll, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Computers, Internet, General, History, Modern, 20th Century, Social History, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9780300248142
Google: bYxhEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B09TL1HPB5
Goodreads: 60742880
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2022-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

But what did it mean for so many thousands of BBSs to “die”? What other explanations could there be for the sudden disappearance of these dial-up networks? For a forensic analysis of the “killing” of the modem world, we need to take a few steps back, to the years just before the Netscape IPO and the release of Windows 95 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the dot-com boom. At the start of the 1990s, BBS sysops were a vanguard force in the emerging internet economy, some of the only people on Earth with practical experience in the social and technical challenges of maintaining an online community. So how did these longtime users respond when their friends and family started talking about cyberspace? What did they imagine when they heard the president touting the construction of an “information superhighway”? Did they expect “the net” to change their lives? How did they react to the swiftly changing cultural economy of the dot-com boom?

A COMING-OUT PARTY FOR THE BBS INDUSTRY

At the outset of the 1990s, BBS operators optimistically awaited public access to the internet. During the previous decade, the internet had been restricted to research institutions. Commercial uses—including amateur BBSs—were discouraged. By 1990, however, an internal process of privatization promised to open the high-speed data network to the general public and create a competitive internet industry.13 Unregulated access to the packet-switched internet promised a new medium for linking BBSs together, free of the costs and constraints of the telephone network. The transformation of the internet from public to private paralleled a transformation in the technical culture of BBS operators as well. In August 1991, over four hundred FidoNet sysops and BBS diehards met in Boulder, Colorado, for FidoCon ’91. Previous conventions had attracted a smaller number of FidoNet insiders and focused on the immediate problems of network growth and maintenance. An especially contentious battle over forming a nonprofit corporation gave FidoCon a reputation for acrimony and arguing—as well as the unfortunate nickname “Fight-O-Con.”14 But with the growing buzz of internet privatization in the background, the 1991 conference promised something different.

The organizers of FidoCon ’91 hoped to change the reputation of the conference. Instead of an administrative meeting aimed at addressing arcane routing issues, they promised that FidoCon ’91 would be “the biggest SysOp gathering in history.”15 Drawing on their prior experience running large “cons” for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts, the organizers explicitly invited BBS users and neophytes to participate.16 Despite the specific name, FidoCon ’91 was broadly aimed at every modem junkie and Echomail addict in the world, a gathering for anyone interested in “international BBSing and electronic communications.”17 It was the first time that anyone had attempted to bring the entire decentralized network of dial-up BBSs together under one roof.

Promotional materials, circulated on BBS networks and computer magazines, promised three days of workshops and events. A preliminary program featured how-to sessions with FidoNet architects Tom Jennings and Tim Požar, a presentation from John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor of

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