BBS The Documentary: Episode 7 of 8: NO CARRIER (The End of the BBS)

Episode 7 of 8 of the BBS Documentary, a mini-series by Jason Scott.
This episode covers the "end" of the BBS era, when internet connectivity began to overrun the phone lines and single-user dial-up BBSes couldn't (or wouldn't) keep up with the times... except the ones who did.
BBS Documentary Information:
Long before the Internet escaped from the lab, connected the planet and redefined what it meant to use a computer...there was a brave and pioneering band of computer users who spent their time, money and sanity setting up their home computers and phone lines to welcome anyone who called. By using a modem, anyone else who knew the phone number of these computers could connect to them, leave messages, send and recieve files.... and millions did.
They called these places "Bulletin Board Systems", or BBSes. And their collections of messages, rants, thoughts and dreams became the way that an entire generation learned about being online.
When the Internet grew in popularity in the early 1990s, the world of the BBS faded, changed, and became a part of the present networked world.. but it wasn't the same.
In the Summer of 2001, Jason Scott, a computer historian (and proprietor of the textfiles.com history site) wondered if anyone had made a film about these BBSes. They hadn't, so he decided he would.
Four years, thousands of miles of travelling, and over 200 interviews later, "BBS: The Documentary", a mini-series of 8 episodes about the history of the BBS, is now available. Spanning 3 DVDs and totalling five and a half hours, this documentary is actually eight documentaries about different aspects of this important story in the annals of computer history.
Baud introduces the story of the beginning of the BBS, including interviews with Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who used a snowstorm as an inspiration to change the world.
Sysops and Users introduces the stories of the people who used BBSes, and lets them tell their own stories of living in this new world.
Make it Pay covers the BBS industry that rose in the 1980's and grew to fantastic heights before disappearing almost overnight.
Fidonet covers the largest volunteer-run computer network in history, and the people who made it a joy and a political nightmare.
Artscene tells the rarely-heard history of the ANSI Art Scene that thrived in the BBS world, where art was currency and battles waged over nothing more than pure talent.
HPAC (Hacking Phreaking Anarchy Cracking) hears from some of the users of "underground" BBSes and their unique view of the world of information and computers.
Compression tells the story of the PKWARE/SEA legal battle of the late 1980s and how a fight that broke out over something as simple as data compression resulted in waylaid lives and lost opportunity.
No Carrier wishes a fond farewell to the dial-up BBS and its integration into the Internet.
Ideal as either a teaching tool or a reminder of your own memories, the BBS Documentary Collection brings back this nearly-forgotten time in a way that will tell the story... one caller at a time.

[@jx5189]

Thanks for putting this series online!

[@azzajohnson2123]

You always need backups for your backups. Hearing that guy losing his cherished data made me really sad for him. We all lose stuff.

[@chrisviklund]

Awesome documentary from start to beginning. Fun to remember my sysop days..

[@naturalmystery]

Had a tear in my eye watching this. Sometimes you've just got to let it go. :(

[@danilko1]

I had my BBS saved to floppies. (1991, WWIV) - When I went to reminisce and check out the BBS, mostly reload it and poke around, some stuff was there but not what I thought it was. I probably screwed up archiving things. When you move away to college, you think, I'll save this for later. You just don't think, I better be careful. Also that first year, was terrible, I had lost my friends. Running a BBS was an awakening for an introvert such as myself - you wouldn't think that was what I was, beforehand. As far as the Internet, I never had the chance to see the BBS die. So to speak I quit at the height of its existence. We all still had modems, for a very long time, upgrading, to faster and faster speeds. Then one day I got ISDN, and then DSL and now fiber. I lived on Usenet, and forums. The idea I supported didn't go away, it transformed. I ran an eGroup before yahoo bought them, then several. I had more users than I could ever have, on the BBS. Anyone remember COMMO? My favorite dialup software. I still have the disk and envelope Wayne Bell sent me with the source code to WWIV.

[@bashkillszombies]

I was a BBS luddite. And I am not ashamed of it. The internet was wonderful but it was taken from us too soon by censorious megacorps.

[@Darxide23]

Listening to people from 2001/2002 talk about the internet here in 2020 is kind of surreal. What's more surreal is that I was there when BBSs died and the Internet took over and it almost doesn't seem like it really happened. Almost like a dream.

[@1956kirk]

And really the web we knew in 2010 for example is dying off as well. There's a lot of internet forums that hardly see any posts or are gone altogether. Everyone's moved to social media sites. This for me seems to have less of a sense of community.

[@SorcererUB]

I ran a BBS from 1985 - 1998 When it became more important to talk to people in other parts of the country, and the world, the BBS was doomed. BBSes that are "alive" today are basically internet forums

[@BokoMoko65]

Lora point to point networks in a auto healing protocol. It already exists.

[@EricRouleau]

Somebody should tell them about Facebook ;)

[@davidmiller9485]

Good God NO!! Facebook is the antithesis of a online community. Yes Facebook dresses it up to appear as a community but it's forced. That kind of thing is why tribalism is out of control as it is.

[@bradclements1815]

hey hey, the ad shown at kzbin.info/www/bejne/j4WleqCkpbp1i9k is the product I wrote - BBSNet .. it didn't last long either. We couldn't get it to work reliably on Winsock 2.0 / 32-bit Windows and MS wasn't any help.