At 18:18 11/26/98 +0000, Max Eskin wrote:
>Did anyone else see this? I thought it was much worse than 2.0, but can
>someone comment on its accuracy, whatever? I thought he left out a lot
>of stuff, about bulletin board systems, and such.
>
My wife and I saw most of it (missed the first 45 min.). We feel it was
aimed more toward folks *not* like us here on the list. The normal,
non-nerdy types of folk is what I mean whether they use the Internet or
not. My wife finally got to see on screen some of the folks that I have
been talking about to her when she asks what I'm reading/studying (Bob
Metcalf, et al). That impressed her.
Our ex-neighbor just got a Compaq Presario from their kids for their 50th
wedding anniversary. He's 72, a retired pastor, totally
non-computer-oriented and just beginning to use and understand IRC and
email. I tutored him a bit on how to use M$ IE yesterday (first time *ever*
I touched IE. Now I'm amongst the damned :) ) and he was really impressed
at how Altavista could hunt up URLs related to religious study keywords we
searched on. This is one of the audiences I feel benefited from the
seemingly lacking program. After all, to cover all of the stuff that we on
the list are aware of the program would end up being a mini-series, cost
much more and bore non-technical people (still most of the audience today)
to tears. There would be much less viewership. Even PBS producers have to
know their audience limits.
For what it is worth, we did like the program anyway as it helped clear up
a few bits of history in my mind (SUN Microsystems history for example) and
I agree there was a few 'holes'.
One thing Max, BBS systems were never really an Internet thing. They were
stand-alone computers that could be dialed-up and info uploaded or
retrieved much like an ftp site and also were locations for the first chat
sites and email -but only amongst users of that BBS who would dial-in to a
number local to that particular BBS -usually long distance to the rest of
the country/world. Online systems like AOL, Compuserve, Delphi, Netcom, et
al had more capability and features and local user dial-ups but still were
not connected to the Internet until around 1992-94.
Just my two cents . . .
Regards, Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY USA cfandt_at_netsync.net
Member of Antique Wireless Association
URL:
http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/
Received on Thu Nov 26 1998 - 15:41:37 GMT