Before the Interweb became ubiquitous, getting “online” meant dialing into Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) with modems, and ASCII GUIs and art were cutting edge technology. BBS: The Documentary is:
a mini-series of 8 episodes about the history of the BBS, [and] is now available. Spanning 3 DVDs and totalling five and a half hours, this documentary is actually eight documentaries about different aspects of this important story in the annals of computer history.
I remember playing around on BBSes on my Commodore, and to a lesser extent on my early PCs. Things were a lot simpler then…
Besides more details related to the documentary, the site has a lot of other interesting information, including a subsite called Textfiles.com that is an amazing archive of things you would find on a BBS. There is a lot to see there, so I suggest you check out the Top 100 Textfiles to get a flavor for what’s available. Man, this takes me back…
Update: Jason Scott, author of the documentary, has a great post in which he discusses his decision to release the documentary under a Creative Commons License. His attitude is extremely refreshing, and although I was pretty much set on buying the DVD set, I am definitely going to now. Well done…
Update: Wired Magazine has a nice article on the documentary…
