The Integrative Stream

BBS: The Documentary

It’s hard to believe that Internet only took off ten years ago. Before 1995, if you wanted access to the Internet and weren’t affiliated with a major university you were more or less out of luck. Which was fine, because there wasn’t much to do on the main network anway.

I got my first Internet access in 1993, but I grew up with computer Bulletin Board Systems instead. Run by hobbyists and generally only allowing a single user at a time, they gave a whole generation its first exposure to online community. BBSes gave me my first opportunity to write, and gave me a reason to learn to program, and introduced me to many people who are still friends.

So I had a great time watching BBS: The Documentary, a four year labor of love from Jason Scott, who is also the proprietor of Textfiles.com, an archive of, well, BBS-era text files. You can find the documentary itself on BitTorrent, thanks to a Creative Commons license, or you can order the three-DVD set.