https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10385-really-enjoyed-jason-scotts-bbs-documentary The Changelog Comments on family, technology, and society Menu Skip to content * About Search for: [ ] [Search] Really Enjoyed Jason Scott's BBS Documentary June 13, 2022Movies, TechnologyJohn Goerzen Like many young programmers of my age, before I could use the Internet, there were BBSs. I eventually ran one, though in my small town there were few callers. Some time back, I downloaded a copy of Jason Scott's BBS Documentary. You might know Jason Scott from textfiles.com and his work at the Internet Archive. The documentary was released in 2005 and spans 8 episodes on 3 DVDs. I'd watched parts of it before, but recently watched the whole series. It's really well done, and it's not just about the technology. Yes, that figures in, but it's about the people. At times, it was nostalgic to see people talking about things I clearly remembered. Often, I saw long-forgotten pioneers interviewed. And sometimes, such as with the ANSI art scene, I learned a lot about something I was aware of but never really got into back then. BBSs and the ARPANet (predecessor to the Internet) grew up alongside each other. One was funded by governments and universities; the other, by hobbyists working with inexpensive equipment, sometimes of their own design. You can download the DVD images (with tons of extras) or watch just the episodes on Youtube following the links on the author's website. The thing about BBSs is that they never actually died. Now I'm looking forward to watching the Back to the BBS documentary series about modern BBSs as well. Post navigation - Visiting Germany: Reflections on Schloss Charlottenburg 1 thought on "Really Enjoyed Jason Scott's BBS Documentary" 1. Pingback: Links 14/06/2022: Oracle Linux 9 Developer Preview | Techrights Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment * [ ] Name * [ ] Email * [ ] Website [ ] [ ] Notify me of follow-up comments by email. [ ] Notify me of new posts by email. [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Learn More) [ ] [Ping me!] * RSS - Posts * RSS - Comments Recent Comments * Links 14/06/2022: Oracle Linux 9 Developer Preview | Techrights on Really Enjoyed Jason Scott's BBS Documentary * Links 30/05/2022: WordPress Turns 19 | Techrights on Fast, Ordered Unixy Queues over NNCP and Syncthing with Filespooler * raymii on Resurrecting Ancient Operating Systems on Debian, Raspberry Pi, and Docker * asjo on A (Partial) Defense of Debian * joakuin on 26 Hours At The Creek Tags * airgap * amateur radio * asynchronous * backups * bicycling * books * btrfs * darcs * Debian * editors * emacs * emacs2018 * encryption * fediverse * filesystems * git * grandma * haskell * health * hosting * Internet * jacob * lora * mercurial * mexico * mexico2011 * music * nncp * obama * org-mode * oscon * radio * religion * security * serendipity * tech support * trac * Tuttle * twitter * uucp * vcs * version control * video * vim * zfs June 2022 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 << May Disclosures Cookies are in use on this site. To help defray part of the cost of operating the services on complete.org, this page may provide commissions for products purchased through links in this post, whether my comments were positive or negative. Search for: [ ] [Search] Proudly powered by WordPress