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<TITLE>T E X T F I L E S: Have You Seen "Fall of the Modem World"?</TITLE>
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<B>HAVE YOU SEEN FALL OF THE MODEM WORLD?</B>
<P>
Essentially, and I do mean essentially, pretty much every "major" BBS textfile
that was passed around on various BBSes throughout the 1980's has made it onto
textfiles.com. Sure, I'm still finding files written from that era, but most
of them only made it to a handful of boards in one town and someone was kind
enough to send me their collection. Pretty much all the "big hits" have been
tracked down and brought onto the site.
<P>
Except one.
<P>
"Fall of the Modem World" was written by someone named "Chris" and represents
one of the more non-famous famous files ever made. In it, he talks about his
time with BBSes and (or so I've heard) touches on the entire BBS culture as an
entity, with a few years behind him. While most of the references I find insult
the file (see below), it has had enough of an effect on people that it is the
most-requested missing file. I've spent over a year trying to track it down,
so I'm turning to you.
<P>
Do NOT confuse, like I did, "Voices in My Head" by Patrick Kroupa with "Fall of
the Modem World". Mr. Kroupa definitely took some inspiration from "FOTMW", but
his work stands completely alone and he's not the same author at all.
<P>
Let me give you the small amount of references and writings I have to it.
<P>
Here's a cranky paragraph about it from one <A HREF="http://www.soldierx.com/txtfiles/phreak/tap-int.3.txt">file</A>:
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<I>"Fall of the Modem World": What can I say about it? In SOOOOOO many ways I
loved it and it says a lot of things I would have wanted to say myself. But the
dude (Chris) fucks it up. He starts talking about the way things "SHOULD" be.
Which is a load of shit. He attempts to look at it from a unattached point of
view and gets too deaply involved in whats wrong with everything. And to top
it off he writes way too much heresay about people he doesn't know at all (like
3/4 of the people he wrote about) and is only repeating things other people
told him, which weren't true. Specifically in one section he says he never met
The Plague, then in the next he says he did. While it was "Charged Particle"
who he met at TAP (the elite starting place of all this) as explained by the
person himself in the PA (Phantom Access) Miscdisk's.</I></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
Lord Digital mentions Fall of the Modem World in <A HREF="http://www.textfiles.com/apple/DOCUMENTATION/phantom.access1">his
own file</A>:
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<I>
"Most of the stuff said about TAP wasn't true and has come
from me anyway. For instance Chris, in Fall of the Modem World, called
me an idiot and then went on to directly copy my sometimes incorrect or
obselete information from Tap.Interviews II."
</I></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
Finally, in a letter dated 1993 from Swamp Ratte' that someone was kind enough
to forward to me, he mentions the file as well:
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<I>
"FALL.MODEMW.ZIP : "Fall Of The Modem World". I had like 1/5th of this up on
here for years and didn't know it was incomplete until recently, so here's the
full version."</I></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
I've often been surprised in the past by what people have sitting around on their
drives that they don't know represents one of the last copies of a famous file.
Here's your chance to help me save a special file that affected a lot of folks
but is in danger of being lost. Thanks.
<P>
Jason Scott<BR>
<B>TEXTFILES.COM</B>
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