Digital communities, including Usenet, Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), CompuServe, and AOL, were the precursor to blogs. Their threaded conversations shared information and insight. Trusting relationships and reputations were built as a result. By Kevin O'Keefe
on
http://kevin.lexblog.com/2014/03/18/law-blogs-ignore-the-history-of-blogging-at-their-peril/
Compuserve and AOL followed the BBS in logical format, with Compuserve accompanied by a short-lived but technically excellent electronic community called The Source. AOL followed shortly thereafter, and was the pre-cursor of wide spread Internet use.
All built on the concept of the electonic community, its ease of use and great promise for instant global communication. It would take some time for technology to catch up with these ideas, but as the user base grew the profit potential was seen by all and this fed advanced in communication.
USENET was the first of these communities, and still lives, re-incatnet as GOOGLE GROUPS - the conversations and participants are new, but the idea of text-based global communities is as old as online communication.
My involvement with the BBS began in 1982, at the North-Pulaski PMS APPLE IIL+ BBS System and the Chicago Greene Machine on a TRS-80 platform. Though these OS's varied and were generally not compatible, the magic that the telephonc lines brought to our 110 and 300 Baud modems gave the varied user communities a way to share files, ideas and more.
The history of USENET is informative and should be required reading for all on line today.
A list of BBS Software is informative and tell the tale of individual initiative in technology.
The story of Compuserve offers a glimpse into early professional development.
The addition of AOL is an important step to understand.
The World Wide Web added to the mix.
We are all participants in this ongoing history, and can only wait to see what is next.
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