
A 1985 Essay from a Bulletin Board System Admin Foretold Our Future - buserror
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-1985-essay-from-a-bulletin-board-system-admin-eerily-foretold-our-future
======
jgrahamc
I think people overplay stuff like this because they think that before
widespread Internet none of the issues being faced had been talked about. For
them the 1980s (or earlier) are a dark age.

The reality is that by 1985 the UK already had the Data Protection Act, the US
had computer crime acts in place, high profile hacks had occurred (notably the
hacking of the Duke of Edinburgh's email in the UK), 2600 was being published,
and WarGames far from being a 'hokey hacking movie' actually showed the
reality of the sort of hacking that someone would undertake (dialing through
phone number after phone number and accessing systems that were largely
unprotected).

If you were immersed in the BBS scene or Usenet at this time these things were
being openly discussed. This essay feels like a very basic summary of some of
what was going on.

~~~
scholia
For most people, "online" means "the web", so roughly two decades of online
services (1975-95) have ceased to exist. This includes FidoNet, Usenet,
Prestel, Teletel, CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy and too many others to mention.

Of those, only AOL still seems to have any mind-share, and that's probably
because it eventually provided internet email and browser-based web
connections.

~~~
fractallyte
Hey, I still use my CompuServe email daily! (Same address since 1997!)

~~~
chrisBob
I occasionally see @aol.com addresses and cringe to think that people might
still be paying $20/month for it. Is a compuserve account free at least?

~~~
fractallyte
AOL acquired CompuServe, but still maintains the mail servers - for now.
People go all wide-eyed when they hear my '@csi.com' address, associating it
with the TV series.

But, yes, it's free ;-)

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rubidium
A bit off topic, but this line stuck out: "I did some googling and couldn’t
find any information on Inman, except for some mentions in lists of BBSes of
times gone by."

It's a pretty self-damning statement by the author that the extent of their
research is confined to "googling". Motherboard Vice's about page says it's
"With in-depth blogging, longform reporting, and video journalism, Motherboard
investigates the news and events that are already affecting the years to
come." This article falls short of any of that.

~~~
sosuke
I've started googling this (ironically?), but other than search engines how do
you find things on the internet?

~~~
csours
Journalists should have access to LexisNexis, among other sources.

Journalists often have to go and talk to real people in meatspace as well.

------
CIPHERSTONE
I loved the BBS era. For those of us kids who saw Wargames at the movie
theater it was almost like magic.

My first modem was 300 baud. You haven't lived until your mom ruined your 5
hour download of a sweet 300-500k game because she picked up the phone. Good
times.

~~~
bedhead
I would also add that you haven't lived until your mom burst into your room
holding a phone bill for hundreds of dollars and demanding an explanation.

~~~
cromwellian
That's when you start phreaking. Then you learn to deal with your mom bursting
in the room when you get a letter from the phone company investigating wire
fraud.

~~~
strictnein
Took me a while to convince my mother that the credit card generator that I
used for "free" accounts was actually just part of a video game I was playing.
She found a print out of some fake AMEX numbers and was not pleased.

~~~
wil421
Brings back memories of using CC generators to call 1-900 numbers for free or
pay for random services online. I still dont know how I never got in trouble.

We also used keygens so we could play online games online for free with a
burned disc (or to play over LAN).

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bitJericho
The scanned essay:

[http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-
images/article/no...](http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-
images/article/no-id/1441400395211305.jpg)

~~~
scrrr
Is there a text-version of this?

~~~
i336_
I'd like to know this too.

I get this impression the "research" conducted in the article involved actual
printed material and not something like textfiles.org.

I quote-searched a couple of sentences from the article on Google, and got the
article back as the sole result.

------
at-fates-hands
While this is interesting, most of the facts were openly being discussed and
are not huge leaps of faith to see coming.

Underground Economies - You had a huge recession in the 1980's. People were
not happy with the government and employment spiked to 9%. This idea wasn't a
huge stretch considering the political and economic environments at the time.

Computer Hacking - Security was non-existent in those days and a myriad of
high profile attacks had already occurred:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computer_security_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computer_security_hacker_history)
It's a not a huge leap to see that security would always be a few steps behind
well organized hackers.

Privacy - People have been talking about the loss of privacy going back to the
1950's and 60's with the Watergate break in. Nothing really big here, only
that computers would make it easier to keep tabs on the general public, not
harder. Hell, people were already talking about Orwell's "1984" which
supposedly predicted a lot of what was going in 1985 - in 1949!!

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buserror
It's entirely possible the rest of the essay predicted flying cars, but the
published bits are good...

