
The Sierra Network - neilprosser
https://www.filfre.net/2018/02/the-sierra-network/
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ahdroit
"In a 1990 address, Steve Jobs, a visionary who gets lots of credit for the
many things he got right but little blame for the equal number of things he
got wrong, said that the 1990s would be “the decade of interpersonal
computing.” When he said it, he was talking of small-scale connectivity via
LANs, not the wide-scale connectivity that was already being enabled by
services like CompuServe and Prodigy, much less the epoch-making invention
that would be the World Wide Web. Ken Williams responded, rightly, that Jobs
was “thinking too small. I agree that ‘interpersonal computing’ — the idea
that the individual computer owner will soon find himself acting as part of a
bigger connected computer community — is the next step in the evolution of
personal computing. But I disagree with Jobs’s vision of the company office as
the birthplace of this technology.”"

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rapnie
agree with you.. isn't this interpersonal computing part of the vision for The
Decentralized Web and current decentralization efforts (or vice versa)?

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Spooky23
My sister and I were both big fans of Sierra. It’s unfortunate that bad
business deals and timing killed the company.

They were pioneers in many ways.

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ballenf
> The typical pattern on CompuServe or America Online was for customers to
> sign up with plenty of sober, practical reasons in mind or at least on the
> tongue — online news, online stock-market quotes, etc. — and then get
> inadvertently hooked on chat and games. The Sierra Network couldn’t pull the
> same bait and switch, for the simple reason that it lacked the same bait. To
> sign up for The Sierra Network, you had to be willing to say up-front that
> this was strictly an entertainment expense — strictly an indulgence, if you
> will. For some reason, many potential subscribers — even the ones with
> gigantic cable-television bills — seemed to find that a hard admission to
> make.

Tax deductibility of CompuServe and even AOL (regardless of whether 95% of
your time was in chat or games) was a huge factor. Not to mention it allowed
selling it to one's spouse or parents as more legitimate.

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brandonmenc
So many fond memories of TSN.

In 7th grade, trapped in the house during snowy winter nights, it became a
real place to hang out. And unlike say, CompuServe, there were a lot of kids
my age there.

Way ahead of its time.

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pcarolan
Agreed. I'd say there's nothing out there today (i'm aware of) that has as
much personality and joy as TSN did.

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avsteele
Boy did I love TSN. Still remember the music that played when you got to the
main town screen.

Got in trouble once when the access number I chose wan't considered local.
Phone bill was high that month!

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djsumdog
There was an open source project to run/emulate TSN/INN services. You could
run the old software in Dosbox and connect to it. People rarely used it
though, and people on the mailing list would try to start scheduling times for
people to "meet" on the service just so it wasn't a ghost town.

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reassembled
Did Halt and Catch Fire writers look to the history of Sierra On-Line when
coming up with the idea for Mutiny in the show?

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chrisstanchak
I always thought so while watching the show. I'm old enough that I had an
account on TSN in the 90s (just the trial since I was a kid).

Side random story: Mackenzie Davis (Cameron Howe) from Halt and Catch Fire
walked into my company, Loveseat.com, in LA a couple months ago. I spent about
an hour playing furniture Tetris with her trying to figure out how to fit a
day bed in her van. She's exactly like her character. I was star struck.

