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Modems & Bulletin Boards (10/22/1985)

From high-tech trysts to selling black-market software, computers users are talking.

Guests: Ezra Shapiro, Byte Magazine; Rory O'Connor, InforWorld; Matthew McClure, The Well; Donald Ingrim, Alameda County DA; George Morrow, Morrow Computing

Products/Demos: CompuServe, Byte BBS, The Well


This movie is part of the collection: Computer Chronicles

Keywords: Episode year: 1985

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Reviewer: jimgardner - - September 1, 2005
Subject: Deep Blue.
A computer becoming world chess champion one day? Never!

Reviewer: cpt_mocha - - September 13, 2004
Subject: There's always some snakes in Eden...
...there sure are!! Less than 20 years later and about a Zillion more online users!

This is a fascinating epsiode from the really really early days of BBS'ing, The WELL, and SysOps. Also some discussion of Fidonet software and some terminal demos on an Apple II and Mac. It's also interesting to hear what are probably some of the first televised discussions of computer network legal issues such as privacy, 1st amendment rights, BBS owner liability, BBS busts, and "how to deal with the real time public communication and the problems it creates".

Also note, George Morrow says that only 60% of upper class homes have typewriters, so why would there ever be more computers in homes than typewriters? Talk about not having any foresight!

This one's a must see!