While the 90′s may seem like a long time ago for some, in the broader perspective, I came to the computing world quite late.
My first computer was a 486 system that my brother gave me some time in the early to mid 1990′s (most likely 1993 or 1994). It was running DOS, Win3.1, and OS/2. My introduction to computer literacy was mainly driven by my desire to figure out how to run games on the system. I don’t remember all of the games, but two in particular were Spear of Destiny (a spin-off of of the shooter Wolfenstein) and NHL 93 (and EA Sports hockey game). With this motivation to learn about the computer, I quickly picked up new things.
On the grand scale of computing history, this was before e-mail caught up with postal mail in volume, right around when Red Hat Linux was introduced, right around when Mosaic released their web browser, and a few years before Apple had a product called “Mac OS”.
It wasn’t too long before I was introduced to the more social aspects of the computing subculture. A friend introduced me to the concept of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and I quickly became hooked to that too. The best way to describe the BBS scene is perhaps as a localized Internet. A BBS was a little system that someone would run from their home and you could dial into it. A whole subculture developed. A BBS would usually have functionality to chat, post messages, upload/download files, play games, etc.
Again, I must stress that I was a later-comer on the BBS scene. When I entered it, the BBS scene was probably somewhere slightly past its prime and starting its decline (or, according to some, already well into it’s decline). My first modem was technically a 2400 baud modem, but that device was so quirky that I never really did much with it. So very soon I jumped up to a 14.4 modem, which seemed fast at the time but is really unbelievably slow.
I called a bunch of BBS systems, possibly around 100 or more. Many friendships formed through this medium, although they were probably not completely deep. I was pretty much a regular on the scene until 1999, when the scene had already pretty much died out. Where there were once hundreds of BBS’ in the Windsor area, at that point there were only 5 or 10. Though I never really ran a full-time BBS, I was quite involved in the scene. I ran a couple of part time BBS’ and was co-sysop (assistant admin) of at least 3 boards. I was co-sysop of Champagne’s Island, Genesis, and Eternal Dreams. I called many a number of system and was thoroughly immersed in the underground BBS scene.
For those interested, here are some of the BBS’ I called besides the ones that have already been mentioned: The Dynamite BBS, Windsor Footnote, Windsor Download, Czar’s Land, The Beacon, Second Sinister, Windsor ITC, Body Count BBS, The Abyss, Limbo BBS, Purple Haze, The Outhouse, The Kombatant, and The Swamp.
Just as things in the BBS scene began to fade away, I ran a low-resolution (ANSI/ASCII) art group which had five releases (one of which was released in my absence after I disappeared from the scene). There are so many other memories, aspects to this, much of which is probably not very well preserved or accessible. For all the efforts to relive the past, such as the BBS Documentary, there are still large black holes in the records. Much of this past, even from the early to mid 1990′s, has simply disappeared off the map, so to speak. It might be a good thing in some ways, and a bad thing in others ways. Some of it here will return back here and there, but for the most part it is gone for good. It seems enough hard drives have died or been erased and memories forgotten in order for much of this socio-cultural history to disappear. And anything that is unearthed will be a small sliver of the whole narrative of what went on.
While “cyberspace” certainly has evolved since then, many things for the better, there’s clearly something different now, and, I think, something lost. But as a whole, I don’t think I’d go backwards if I could. Technological change changes us, and nostalgia aside, we are not the same sort of people that enjoyed in the BBS scene back in the 80′s and 90′s.
