What Was It About BBSs? 2024-01-27

A recent Mastodon post got me looking at Feedle, which got me reading about Bulletin Board Systems, which got me thinking about how the digital world we live in today sucks. I accept that there are plenty of people who think our current digital landscape is just super, and I forgive them for being wrong. They are. You see, people like me [old people] are aware of a time when computer places were inhabited by people who wanted to be there. Today people participate in communications that traverse the internet [small i intentional] because if they were to avoid it they would simply be cut off from pretty well everyone else. In the 80s and 90s people who didn't participate in BBSs could simply walk out the door and be part of a plethora of communities. That luxury seems to be dwindling.

Humans are broken.

See, the difference is that the people using [and operating] BBSs had an interest in the technology itself. Understanding how it worked was part of the communication. Today people expect to have communication, but couldn't give a shit how any of the technology works underneath. I think that the fact the vast majority of people communicating via this digital world do not care about it, is a big part of why it has been able to turn in to such a pile of shit over the years. Infrastructure takes work and requires maintenance. If you have very few people maintaining infrastructure for a huge number of people who are using that infrastructure, it falls in to a state of disrepair. Need an example? Go ask someone who is responsible for financially supporting a vehicle that drives on municipal roadways.

I think it is time to get the wankers off the highway.