Does Not Compute / 1980s _
Bulletin board systems, or BBSs, were the first widely used social networks. They emerged in the late 1970s and exploded in popularity across the 1980s: by 1994, there were nearly 60,000 BBSs in the United States alone. A BBS was an electronic meeting place hosted on a personal computer. Callers dialed in, paid a small fee, and once connected could exchange messages, share files, and play text-based games.
This module focuses on the 1980s BBS era: local, strange, and vibrant. The resources below combine archives of surviving BBS content with scholarship on its social life.
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Annotated bibliography
1980s Annotated Bibliography
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■ Archives
The largest archive of BBS textfiles, containing materials dating back to the early 1980s. Not easily searchable or sorted — these are almost all distinct textfiles rather than back-and-forth conversations.
A beautifully designed archive of one particular BBS: The Thing, active in New York City and focused on art. It preserves early 1990s conversations. By clicking on a board and then a message thread, you can follow iterative BBS conversations. Media scholar Lori Emerson has written about the archive here.
ASCII art — drawings made from typographic characters — was a staple on BBSs. The archive draws from a 1990s Usenet newsgroup for ASCII hobbyists. Browsing the categories gives an overview of the art shared on BBSs.
ASCIPR0N archive
A mysterious archive gathering hundreds of pornographic ASCII artworks. It is unclear whether this is a personal collection or a group project. ASCII porn was popular on BBSs.
FidoNet, which reached peak popularity in the mid-1990s, made it possible for local BBSs to link up and forward files. This archive preserves messages shared to two BBSs — ExecPC BBS (which started in Wisconsin and became one of the world’s most popular BBSs) and Starfleet HQ (a BBS focused on Atari games) — between 1993 and 1999.
A newsletter for FidoNet sysops and users, distributed by FidoNet inventor Tom Jennings. This partial archive focuses on 1984–1998 and gives an overview of the issues that occupied FidoNet users, from privacy concerns to popular culture. Note that .nws files can be read through an online file converter.
Grew out of PC Micro BBS, which gathered utility software for BBS users and sysops. The archive largely focuses on 1990s software, but also contains artworks and “how to” guides.
■ Scholarship
Brewster, Kathryn, and Bonnie Ruberg. “SURVIVORS: Archiving the History of Bulletin Board Systems and the AIDS Crisis.”
First Monday 25, no. 10 (2020).
Focuses on a BBS active 1987–1990 and dedicated to life with HIV. The exchanges were preserved in print-out form; the authors consider how this change in media format affects the archive’s continued life. Through queer theory and media history, the article uses the BBS to think about archives and precarity.
Cifor, Marika, and Claire McDonald. “‘I Hope We Leave More of a Record’: Radical Queer Care within and for the AIDS INFO BBS’s Caregivers Mailing List.”
Feminist Media Histories 9, no. 1 (2023): 78–97.
Traces how, across thousands of emailed messages from a BBS-linked caregivers mailing list, a distinct model for technologized queer care emerged. The continued life of both the mailing list and the BBS, even after both fell out of use, is itself an example of this care.
Dame-Griff, Avery. The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet.
New York: NYU Press, 2023.
Examines the transgender internet from its 1980s origins to the present. The first chapter focuses on BBSs, describing how different gender communities employed early computer networks that brought them together into new visibility. Highlights anonymity, rapid asynchronous communication, and file sharing as key attractions over newsletters.
Delwiche, Aaron. “Early Social Computing: The Rise and Fall of the BBS Scene (1977–1995).”
In The SAGE Handbook of Social Media, edited by Jean Burgess, Alice Marwick, and Thomas Poell, 35–52. Newbury Park: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018.
A general overview of the BBS format’s rise and fall, connecting technological advances — whether hardware such as better modems, or software such as FidoNet — to social concerns, from the emergence of the “hacker” figure to the popularity of pornography on BBSs.
Driscoll, Kevin. “Social Media’s Dial-Up Roots.”
IEEE Spectrum 53, no. 11 (2016): 54–60.
An accessible introduction to BBS culture, from early beginnings through the late 1980s and early 1990s. Covers the development of FidoNet and Echomail, underlines the “wacky and weird” aspects of BBS culture, and argues it turned the formal, research-oriented internet into the public sphere we know today.
Driscoll, Kevin. “‘Thou Shalt Love Thy BBS’: Distributed Experimentation in Community Moderation.”
In Computer Network Histories: Hidden Streams from the Internet Past, edited by Paolo Bory, Gianluigi Negro, and Gabriele Balbi, 15–34. Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2019.
Analyzes content moderation on BBSs through an archive of how-to documents, legal advice, user policy agreements, and satirical essays. Examines moderation practices by BBS sysops during the 1980s and 1990s, against the backdrop of increasing commercialization.
Driscoll, Kevin. The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022.
Takes up the BBS to offer an origin story for social media, centering hobbyists rather than the military-academic complex or Silicon Valley. An archive of BBS textfiles, oral histories, documentaries, and magazines reveals how dedicated enthusiasts pioneered solutions to the challenges we now associate with social media platforms.
Furman, Ivo. “Hi! Türkiye and Turkish BBS and Digital Cultures.”
In The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories, edited by Gerard Goggin and Mark McLelland, 209–24. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Focuses on Hitnet, a 1990s BBS network in Turkey based on FidoNet protocols. Drawing on private archive correspondence logs, the article highlights a growing subculture of computer enthusiasts whose organizational roles foreshadowed their key positions in Turkey’s later communication networks.
Liang, Li Shao, Lin Yi-Ren, and Arthur Hou-Ming Huang. “A Brief History of the Taiwanese Internet: The BBS Culture.”
In The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories, edited by Gerard Goggin and Mark McLelland, 182–96. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Discusses the development of the Taiwanese internet, to which a distinctive BBS culture was central. BBSs remained highly popular in Taiwan into the 2000s — a durability attributed to their origins in student communities and relative autonomy, which helped them remain important to social movements.
McIlwain, Charlton. “The Electronic Village Needs an Organizer.”
In Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter, 91–106. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Traces AfroNet, a FidoNet subset organized by and for Black folks. Drawing on oral histories, archived BBS posts, and Usenet messages, the chapter shows how careful organizers built this self-organized network in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
McKinney, Cait. “Printing the Network: AIDS Activism and Online Access in the 1980s.”
Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 32, no. 1 (2017): 7–17.
Explores how early BBS users extended access to new computer networks by printing online information in newsletters. Through an analysis of the Philadelphia-based Critical Path organization, the article demonstrates that HIV/AIDS activists approached new online networks as an equity issue shaped by their broader understandings of structural violence.
Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Follows the transformation of the computer from a device for military bureaucracy to a tool for collaborative liberation. The WELL, a San Francisco BBS established by Stewart Brand, brought together counterculturalists and technologists alike, providing important background to BBS subculture and its relationship to hacking and communalism.
Woon, Chih Yuan. “‘Protest Is Just a Click Away!’: Responses to the 2003 Iraq War on a Bulletin Board System in China.”
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29, no. 1 (2011): 131–49.
Focuses on the Qiangguo Luntan (QGLT), an influential Mandarin BBS, through a critical analysis of posted responses to the 2003 US-initiated war in Iraq. Demonstrates how interconnected Chinese communities can weave alternative viewpoints and shape antiwar consensus through networked technology beyond the reach of territorially based governments.
■ Miscellaneous
A hobbyist’s delight: a freely accessible documentary aiming to capture the BBS era.
Considers how BBSs were abandoned. What does it mean to see a social network as a ruin?
Magazines
BBSing was a hobby, and hobbyists subscribed to magazines. Browsing through these publications is one way to get a sense of the culture.
There are still people interested in BBSing today. Many gather on Reddit to share experiences and advertise their boards. For a particularly cool browser-accessible example, see A New Session.