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Ward Christensen (of BBS and XMODEM fame) has died

(en.wikipedia.org)
322 points DamonHD | 1 comments | 13 Oct 24 15:39 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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xorcist ◴[13 Oct 24 18:01 UTC] No.41830084[source]▶
BBSes was such a huge part of being into computers in the 80s and 90s.

I really wish this culture could be understood by future generations. Yes, we have the BBS Documentary movie but we need so much more. Everything non-US is underdocumented, and all the subcultures such as the eLiTe scene, the demo scene, the vision impaired stuff, all of that risks being forgotten with time.

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INTPenis ◴[13 Oct 24 19:26 UTC] No.41830794[source]▶
It's the standard antithesis of instant gratification culture. We had to actually wait for things to happen, to download, to render, to dial.

Finding something online was a journey and it's often the journey that teaches you more than the destination.

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1. flyinghamster ◴[13 Oct 24 20:01 UTC] No.41831057[source]▶
Even when you had a networked forum like FidoNet's Echomail (or Usenet, for that matter), it would take time for messages to propagate through the network - and they could sometimes fail to be delivered.