BBS The Documentary: Episode 1 of 8: BAUD (The Beginning)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend the series as the definitive history of BBS culture and its Fidonet roots, especially for nostalgia and the origins of the demoscene.
What it is
The first episode of Jason Scott's eight-part BBS documentary, covering the predecessors and beginnings of the dial-up bulletin board system. It includes interviews with pioneers such as Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who created the first dial-up BBS in 1978.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2019 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec Eremotherium · 2020-04 · on “textfiles.com”
He also gave us the brilliant BBS: The Documentary [this video] GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary (shot in 1080p) [LINK] and (apart from his many talks) his podcast "Jason Scott talks his way out of it" which is just gem after gem of documented tech ephemera. [LINK] It's baffingly hard to quantify how many people he (and all the other great people at the Internet Archive) has affected with his bullheaded conservation efforts.
Recommends kbr2000 · 2019-12 · on “Randy Suess, computer bulletin board inventor, has died”
Well, thank you a lot Randy! Great idea, good times... In case this interests someone, I recommend you to check out Jason Scott's BBS Documentary [ [LINK] ], and while the DVDs sold out, it seems to be available on his youtube channel [ [this video] ]. PS. adding a trailing dot after .com in the article URL saves you some trouble :)
Recommends mwest · 2022-12 · on “My secret life as an 11-year-old BBS sysop”
Some great nostalgia reading this. If you want more, check out Jason Scott's "BBS: The Documentary": [this video]
Recommends effekt · 2023-10 · on “What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form”
If you'd like to know where the demoscene came from, look no further than The BBS Documentary[1] The whole thing started w/ cracktros in the 80s and through the artscene it eventually evolved into its own scene that was entirely disconnected from its roots in piracy. 1. [this video]
Cites deepnet · 2022-10 · on “Recording the Grateful Dead: The Culture of Tapers”
The overlap between early nerd culture and The Grateful Dead was very significant. Taping and sharing culture and its benefits were very apparent in many net forums. As were democratisation of the new tools, public terminals with BBS access and the Deadheads community spirit exemplified on Usenet and Arpanet. Look no further than John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder and his Manifesto of Cyberspace - he was a Grateful Dead Lyricist ! [LINK] Barlow's paradigm seems cheeky without awareness of the Net's public roots, how it came up through BBS and Fidonet culture, is forgotten by those who only saw the view of the Net as a gift from the ivory towers of academia and the military rather than bedroom
Cites DonHopkins · 2025-01 · on “Psychedelic Graphics 0: Introduction”
[LINK] >deepnet on Oct 6, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: Recording the Grateful Dead: The Culture of Tapers >The overlap between early nerd culture and The Grateful Dead was very significant. >Taping and sharing culture and its benefits were very apparent in many net forums. >As were democratisation of the new tools, public terminals with BBS access and the Deadheads community spirit exemplified on Usenet and Arpanet. >Look no further than John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder and his Manifesto of Cyberspace - he was a Grateful Dead Lyricist ! [LINK] >Barlow's paradigm seems cheeky without awareness of the Net's public roots, how it came up through BBS and Fidonet culture, is forgotten