BBSs

[asmodeusb]

Its weird to see that today's youth (the forum I was catching up with is overrun with 13-year-olds (at least it seems that way with the "I'm 13" posts followed up with several "I'm 13 too" posts)) have to resort to Wikipedia to know what a BBS is

Comments

[anonymous]

The world has changed. Hadley is 10 months old now and I was thinking a few days ago about things she'll never fully understand because to her they have always been. Simple things mostly, like cars with headlight switches. Or the fact that people could have a relationship to a TV channel like we did to ckco-tv, which is impossible in todays world of channel selection and specialty channels.

Words change too. Things like "Look it up" often strikes me as the most changed even though the meaning is the same. 20 years ago it was mostly a joke. Ya, sure, next time I'm in the school library I'll sift though the cards and then hunt for a book that might confirm my fact, as long as that fact is at least 6 months old, or however long it takes to go from paper to publisher to Elma T.P.S library. Or maybe I'll go to the shelf of encyclopedias at home. 5 years ago "Look it up" became synonymous with "google it" but most recently it has been "check wikipedia". Hadley will never know a world where you couldn't look up recent world information. She won't be able to comprehend what it was like without access to the world's knowledge the same way I can't comprehend what it was like for the day to end when the sun went down, as it did for my grandparents.

Back to BBS's, they were an amazing and wonderful little blip on the path of progress to the internet. Many of their features are still more engaging that the internet can produce, and yet I agree with asmodeusb, there is no return. I'm not sure I'll be able to explain to Hadley the anticipation of your 70th modem dial.

-Brian