The Early Part of Internet History That People Don’t Talk About¶
I disagree, while Microsoft may not be making many tangible newsworthy they have still been innovating. They made the programming language c# which is widespread, they have recently been focused on machine learning with bing, and they play a role in cybersecurity —
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The idea of "THE internet" vs the definition of the internet as a bunch of systems connected via a network. —
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Yet the internet of today is not a stable object with a single, coherent history. It is a dynamic socio-technical phenomenon that came into being during the 1990s, at the intersection of hundreds of regional, national, commercial, and cooperative networks—only one of which was previously known as “the internet.”1
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“information superhighway,”1
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What made the internet popular was not some British Corporation like the telegraph it was groups of humans who shared a passion for communication. —
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What this origin story leaves out are the thousands of people running highly local networks of personal computers who created early online communities at a grassroots level.1
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Because they foreshadowed the intensely personal and interactive blogs, forums, and social media platforms that emerged later, exploring how these communities developed and sustained themselves not only provides a fuller history of the internet, but offers insights into how we might build healthier online communities that are more just, equitable, and inclusive.1
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The internet essentially created a whole new form of medium, digital. Something that is similar to physical mediums like books and newspaper but with vastly more creativity due to the ease of publishing original work. This allowed more people to express their opinions in public. —
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internet became a medium for everyday life1
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Modem's are then a key component for the internet to even be created. Its the roads to navigate from site to site. —
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Modem owners knew themselves as a separate class of computer users, capable of traversing the emerging byways of cyberspace. The networks that they frequented came to be known, collectively, as the “modem world.”1
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We see many of these today but in a more evolved form, such as reddit and discord. —
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bulletin boards systems provided a low-cost infrastructure for people interested in exploring the possibilities of online community.1
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Very different then most things we have covered in this class. Most R&D is government funded or by a large corporations, now its by small enthusiast's tinkering trying to make their machines better and sharing this information to the world. Nowadays we call it open-source.
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the modem world was driven by community-oriented amateurs and entrepreneurs—hobby radio groups, computer clubs, software pirates, and activist organizations.1
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This is a big part of why the internet is popular, for people to share their interests anonymously because they think others may find it weird. —
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Later, they linked a more diverse group of PC owners, including communities bound together by interests and identities that were otherwise excluded from mainstream media systems.1
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By most accounts, BBSs emerged out of the famously snowy winter of 1978, when Ward Christensen and Randy Suess created the Computerized Bulletin Board System, or CBBS, using a home-built S-100 microcomputer and a brand-new Hayes modem. Christensen and Suess were members of a local microcomputer club, known as the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyist’s Exchange, or CACHE. The club’s newsletter was a vital source of information—but club members had to be cajoled into submitting new articles, and there was no easy way to provide access to earlier issues.1
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Bulletin boards were something that could easily be tailored to the creators needs, this led to innovations not by some big corporation trying to make money but individuals that know what practical features we really want. Finally, something created by passion and not the wants of investors. —
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Each new BBS tweaked the core concept of the computerized bulletin board, adding features for trading files or playing games, implementing rules regarding user behavior, and expressing the local culture and personality of its owners.1
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Early cloud computing. This would later come to evolve to game streaming services where you can stream AAA games straight to your computer from a server. —
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Whereas The Source emphasized access to information, MicroNET promised access to computing power.1
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The kids are the ones innovating and carving a path for the future of the internet that they are going to be spending their wholes lives using whether they realize it or not. —
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But what did the middle-aged hobbyists and teen newcomers have to say to each other? And what teenager could afford to pay for the commercial services? Soon, modem-equipped teens were hosting bulletin boards of their own, adapting the technology to meet their interests and needs.1
Cyberbullying¶
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Very similar to the distribution of the telephone and telegraph. —
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Through the 1980s, the distribution of BBSs roughly followed the distribution of people. Modem owners living in densely settled cities had a broader choice of local BBSs to call than people living in smaller towns did. In metropolitan areas, the concentration of boards encouraged sysops to specialize, resulting in BBSs that served communities of interest within the city.1
Peer-to-Peer network¶
Double-edge sword of being anonymous¶
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But the process of privatizing the state-sponsored internet was messy. Lacking any central authority or advocacy organization, the interests of BBS users and sysops were hardly considered at all. Compounding that lack of representation, longtime internet advocates were generally unfamiliar with the technology and culture of dial-up networks.1
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The idea of online porn destroying a whole industry is interesting. —
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Finally, when a moral panic over “cyberporn” threatened to burst the dot-com bubble, BBSs provided a convenient scapegoat. BBSs were old and dirty; the Web was new, clean, and safe for commerce. To avoid the stigma, enterprising BBS operators quietly rebranded. Seemingly overnight, thousands of dial-up BBSs vanished, replaced by brand-new “internet service providers.” In the United States, the term “BBS” fell out of use.1
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As the internet becomes the compulsory infrastructure of everyday life, the stories we tell about its origins are more important than ever. Recovering the history of the modem world helps us to imagine a world beyond—or perhaps after—commercial social media, mass surveillance, and platform monopolies1
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