mirror-textfiles.com/thoughts/denver.art

 ONLINE PIONEER'S WEB SITE CHRONICLES PHENOMENON'S BEGINNING
 By David Thomas, Cyberculture
 Denver Post, August 1, 1999

 The online revolution started early for Jason Scott.
  
 "A wonderful thing happened in the 1980s. Life started to go online." he
 explains on his Web site, www.textfiles.com. "And as the world continues
 this trend, everyone finding themselves drawn online should know what
 happened before, to see where it all really started to come together and
 to know what went on, before it's forgotten.

 Now a computer systems administrator in Boston, Scott was once a wide-eyed
 kid experiencing the world of computers through green text on a black
 screen shot across the globe on telephone wires connecting early home
 computers in a proto-Internet.

 Before the Web brought graphics to the Net and while the Internet was
 still secretively managed by government and academic wizards, home-grown
 bulletin board systems (BBSs) linked isolated nerds.  Sharing wit, wisdom
 and software, BBSs grew into networks of passionate text-file creators.
 
 And while the growth of the Internet has all but overshadowed even the
 memory of these '80s systems, Scott remembers them and works diligently
 to document their moment in history.

 "What really got to me when I was doing searching of BBS names that meant
 something to me from my teenage years, was how all these important (to me)
 people and places were nowhere to be found," he said in an e-mail interview.
 
 "You couldn't get your hands on any aspect of this culture online, at 
 least not in a force I considered anywhere near complete or helpful.
 If I thought I'd found a site up to this point that was attempting 
 the job I was, then I wouldn't be doing it, but I didn't, so here I am."

 While people today think of the Internet as the repository of everything
 imaginable, from the profane to the profound, the record that Scott so
 meticulously preserves clearly shows that while the 'Net may have settled
 the frontiers of cyberspace, BBSs pioneered all the trials with nothing
 more than a keyboard of letters and numbers.

 On his site, Scott has compiled more than 16,000 individual text files into
 30-plus categories covering everything from the occult, science fiction and
 politics to programming, law and computer games.

 For those needing a quick orientation, this dedicated Web master provides
 his own top 100. These files range from nudes created with nothing but
 letters and numbers to dissertations on anarchist principles and technical
 discussions of hacking.

 The Top 100, and the entire text files archive, capture a little of 
 everything that was of interest to the computer geeks of the 80's (some of
 it suitable for adults only).

 "I do think these files are very relevant to the computer culture of
 today," Scott writes. "When people speak of the BBS days now, there's very
 little that the curious can easily find in the way of example texts from
 the 1980s. By getting these files arranged on the site, I've provided
 people with insight into how computer culture has passed information in
 the past, how communities have regulated themsleves, and perhaps they can
 cull ideas on how to accomplish computer-culture tasks of today, like 
 making a site that people will want to visi, and ways to communicate
 effectively through writing."

 As the information highway fills up, textfiles.com fills two important
 purposes. Not only does it stand as an example of the kind of obsessive
 documenting, preservation, and sharing of information that made the
 Internet so exciting in the first place, it also serves as a significant
 touchstone.

 Sifting through the textfiles, it's not hard to see what is essentially
 important to people online -- sharing ideas, arguing about the truth
 and swapping information.

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 David Thomas' column appears every Sunday in The Scene.