Path: csiph.com!optima2.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!us.feeder.erje.net!newsfeed.fsmpi.rwth-aachen.de!newsfeed.straub-nv.de!news-1.dfn.de!news.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: RS Wood Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: The BBS era Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2015 10:25:25 +0300 Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <874mky61sw.fsf@elektro.pacujo.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net oZ1w7bZreuB9Dl6FYoSEmw4Z88x50llpispkrFH3VPXgpXma23 Cancel-Lock: sha1:EOCq0sjjmmL3ZwrMysR1Yb4i7cM= User-Agent: Unison/2.1.10 Xref: csiph.com comp.misc:8197 On 2015-07-21 04:25:42 +0300, Michael Black said: > It was an interesting period, since the internet only became local as > the masses arrived. Previously, the chances of bumping into someone you > knew, or was local, was very unlikely, unless you went to a University. > So there was all kinds of talk about getting people online, and all > kinds of talk about making things local, which hadn't been an issue > just a few years earlier. BBSs would have helped take up the slack > right during that period, but right on that cusp, the BBSs were > dismissed. Michael's got an interesting point about BBS being local and the internet discarding that and going for a model that dismissed national borders. It was inevitable, I suppose. Semi-related is this book by Sherry Turkle, "Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other" I'd heard was good - haven't read it myself since it seems like another book whose 300 page contents you can surmise from the title alone. There's some kind of a new chat app gaining traction on universities, that's trying to recreate that 'local' vibe - it only allows you to connect to people who are physically/geographically proximate somehow. That probably works on a university well enough but back in one's podunk little farming village in southwestern Shittystan, not much hope. Still, would be interesting to experiment with this kind of design philosophy and see where it leads us.