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        From the BBS Backroads to the Information Super Highway.
                  (or Where Did All The BBSes Go?!?)
                           By Fire Escape

With the advent of the home computer in the 1970's there arose a
hobby known as BBSing. This was the beginning of a great electronic
community which met and exchanged ideas over what today is called
cyberspace. Before the internet became accessible to the common
person, computer bulletin boards were connecting large amounts of
people to others in their local community. BBSes (as they are
nicknamed) operate by allowing people to connect to another person's
home computer via the local telephone lines.  Since this was usually
a local phone call, it was as free as calling your neighbor up to
chat about the weather. Most early computer bulletin boards were run
as free public hobbyist systems and they operated on great state of
the art BBS softwares like C64, Fido, Opus, Seadog, GBBS and MTABBS.
The C64 ran on Commodore 64 machines, MTABBS ran on TRS-80's, GBBS
ran on Apple machines and Fido, Opus and Seadog ran on the early IBM
8088's.

This was an exciting era in the BBS world. As machines became faster
and cheaper to own, more and more BBSes went online and the softwares
they ran evolved to meet the needs of the people who used them. In
the mid 1980's Microsoft introduced Windows to the computer world.
This inevitably led to an increase in multinode systems which could
support more than one user online at a single time. Before this time,
multinode systems where much more expensive because they required one
computer for each instance of the BBS and they had to be networked
together through primitive methods.  Microsoft allowed BBSes to open
several instances of their software on the same computer. We saw new
multiline BBS softwares arise in response to this new development and
soon there were many multiline BBSes running Oracomm, DLX, Major and
TBBS. Because this multinode environment required more phone lines,
many of the BBSes had to begin charging a fee for access to cover
their expenses. There were now large commercial systems operating
side by side with the small hobbyist systems.

By the end of the 1980's the BBS hobby was rapidly spreading and the
number of computer bulletin boards began skyrocketing. The boards
moved off of their IBM 286es and onto the 386 which followed it in
early 1990. The size of hard disks tripled and the speed of modems
quadrupled in less than 5 years. This greatly impacted the BBS
community and we began to see systems with huge 500 MEG filebases and
fast 9600 baud modems. By 1992 most BBSes were moving onto 486s and
had upgraded their modems to 14.4's and their hard drives to 1
MEGGERS. The BBS community had expanded locally to an incredible 450
systems in St. Louis alone. Due to Wayne Bell's early seeding of the
BBS community here the late 1980's, by the early 90's WWIV or World
War IV BBS software was the most common BBS software to be found.
Over 200 systems in St. Louis were running this software in 1992.
Users in the BBS community would also encounter softwares such as
Telegard (a WWIV clone), Renegade, Wildcat, PC-Board, VBBS, Remote
Access and Maximus.

For the next 2 years (1992 to 1994) the BBS community would reach
it's maximum growth. These were the best two years for the local BBS
community in St. Louis. Between 1992 and 1994 processors and modems
became faster and cheaper. Hard drives became bigger and cheaper. BBS
softwares were being written and a new hybrid version seemed to pop
up every few months. Boards were bursting with users, sometimes as
many as 60 people a day per node for your average system. Busy
signals were a common problem during this era of BBSing. Many terminal
programs now implemented the "Auto-redial" feature which up until
this point, hadn't really been necessary when calling a BBS.
In early 1995, Netscape began to appear on BBSes with this description:

"Graphical Internet Browser makes the World Wide Web easy to
navigate.".

Users downloaded this file and began to spread it about. A few brave
souls ventured from the BBS community onto the internet with this new
innovative program called an Internet Browser and came back to tell
us all about the wonders they'd encountered in this strange new world.

Slowly over the next year, users began to explore this newly
discovered alternative to BBSing. The media played up the internet
and browser software began to appear left and right. By early 1996,
internet providers were calling to BBSers and non-computer users from
every computer magazine, newspaper and BBS.  By the middle of 1996,
the great migration (as I like to call it) was beginning to have an
effect on the local BBS community.

As user activity on the BBSes began to decline, sysops became
discouraged and closed up shop. The number of BBSes began to fall,
first a few, then a few more and finally a landslide. By early 1997,
BBSes had dwindled to a mere quarter of their previous number. St.
Louis was turning into a BBS Ghost-Town. I have given a lot of thought
to the reason for the great decline in BBSing and here are my
conclusions:

Beginning in 1995 with the advent of web browsers, internet access
became accessible to the average non-technical person. Many left the
local BBS for the internet at this time. Then colleges and high schools
began to hook their students up to the internet for education and this
turned most of the next BBS generation onto the internet instead of
onto the BBS where they were needed to replace those who were leaving
it for various other reasons. If you effectively kill off a whole
generation of BBS users, then there will be no one left to carry on
the legacy. And that is just exactly what we have done to the BBS
generation with the internet.

Many people defend this as a natural and necessary part of electronic
and social evolution, but that implies that the change is for the
better. I am not entirely convinced that this is the case with the
internet and the BBS. Some proponents of this evolution cite the
larger arena of the internet as being superior to the small scale of
life on a local BBS. But is bigger really better? Many people are
overwhelmed and frightened by the huge vastness of the internet. These
same people have probably never even heard of a BBS and have no
concept of what a small electronic community can offer in terms of
SECURITY and ORDER. Is the lack of organization and security on the
internet really superior to the safe haven of a BBS? Are the
unmoderated discussion groups, cybersex chats and incessant junk mail
bombardments really that much better than the local BBS with it's
SysOps, moderators and filters?? I contend that it is not. The local
community BBS still has a great deal to offer to the online community.

In the great ocean of the internet, we can be islands of tranquility,
a safe resort to hide in from the turbulence of cyberspace. However if
the local BBS is to survive into the next century we will have to do a
few things to see that it doesn't disappear into the annals of
computer history.

The first thing to be done is to increase the public's awareness of
the local community BBS. The internet has gotten so much attention
that no one ever seems to mention the BBS anymore. Write letters and
articles to your local papers about the BBS community and get them
interested in giving it some media.

Second, support your local BBSes by calling them and if they are
worthy, even donating to them. If the SysOps don't think anyone cares
then why should they continue to put the effort into providing the
service?

Third, encourage your local BBSes to hook up to the internet so they
are accessible through the world wide web. Many sysops are afraid to
do this because they do not understand how to go about doing so.
Internet access is a survival issue for local BBSes now. If the
internet is like a super highway then we have to construct on and off
ramps to the local BBSes to provide access for the majority of online
users. People want a BBS which will also be an internet provider for
them.

Many sysops are currently just holding their breath and covering their
eyes hoping that the internet will just "go away" and that once it's
novelty wears off, their users will return to their BBSes. I think
this is a hollow pipe-dream and that those sysops are simply deluding
themselves and will in the end discover their folly in not adapting to
the changing needs of their users. It is true that some of the
internet users have gotten "burned out" and have come back to the BBS
community, but this is not something I see becoming a trend. In fact,
If I were to speculate on BBS trends here are my predictions for the
1998 to year 2000 period.

1. Traditional BBS use will continue to decline.
2. Traditional BBSes will continue to disappear.
3. More BBSes will connect themselves to the internet.
4. More parents and young children will enter the old BBS community
  looking for an alternative to the "dangerous" anti-family world of
  the internet.
5. More G-rated Safe Haven Family-Oriented BBSes will go online.
6. There will emerge a new kind of BBS which couples internet access
  and availability via the WWW with the security, moderation and
  organization of the traditional BBS.

Beginning in early 1997, many sysops of traditional BBSes began
organizing into BBS promotion/awareness organizations to accomplish
their goal of taking the BBS hobby into the next century. Many of these
groups are still working towards this goal. Some of the better known
Sysop/User groups are:

ICON at http://icon.rgcomputing.com, The BBS Promotion Team at
http://www.bbs-promotion.org, and The BBS Awareness Project at
http://www.kerowyns-haven.com/BBSAware.

Membership is free to all who promote BBS awareness. The main goal
of these organizations is to promote BBSing as an alternative to
internet surfing and to increase the public awareness regarding the
local traditional BBS.

So my challenge to you is this: Do you want to see the local BBS
evolve into a better thing and survive this turbulent period in
cyber-history? Or will you let the internet engulf it and obliterate
it forever? It's up to you. You are the consumer, the buyer and the
computer user. It is for you that these things have been created and
because of you that they still exist. Consider carefully the choices
you make in this matter. Do you want your children to grow up on the
internet where there is no Sysop to watch over their shoulder when
you can't?  Without the local BBS, that's your only alternative and
it's not one that I consider very good. It is my hope that you will
hear and receive this message in the spirit it is intended. The BBS
is dying and you are it's last best hope.  Save it.