Web 2.0 Provides A Wonderful Trip Down Memory Lane

In the last couple of years, web professionals have been gushing about Web 2.0. A look at Wikipedia tells us that the term Web 2.0 was developed by O'Reilly Media that refers to a second generation of web services that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. Go beyond Wikipedia and look at other sources and you will very likely get about a thousand and one descriptions of Web 2.0. So it appears that Web 2.0 is a different thing for different people although social networking seems to be a common denominator among all the different descriptions. Take note though of the terms "online collaboration" and "sharing among users" because they will figure prominently in what we are about relate.

Now before anything else, this article is neither an endorsement nor criticism of Web 2.0. But to an old-timer such as myself, Web 2.0 is a rehash of some of the online things we used to do back in the late 80's and early 90's. For those of us who have been doing the rounds of the internet even before Netscape was born, we had our own social networking scene then. They were known as Bulletin Board Systems or BBS's. In today's web world, bbs is synonymous with online forum--the sites which commonly have people contributing answers to questions posted by fellow users.

Back in the early days, bbs's were literally a system in themselves. To be able to access a bbs in your area, you need a modem hooked up to your computer. These modems would use the regular telephone line to achieve connection. As the person trying to access, also known as the client, you would also need a "terminal" application to issue the dialing instruction. Two of the most common terminal programs were Telix and Hyperterminal, and oh, we were mostly using either DOS or Windows 3.1 then, and a few using either Linux or OS/2. Oh my God, OS/2!

If you are now trying to catch your breath from the description of the processes involved just to access a bbs back then, it was indeed cumbersome to a certain extent. Too many application requirements to make a simple connection. But to fast-forward a bit, once you get connected to a bbs, there were also a thousand and one things you could do while online, most if not all of which were equally as exciting as what some of today's wonderful web applications have to offer.

Online collaboration and sharing were two of the biggest attractions of the bbs community especially if you were a member of a bbs network. The biggest bbs network at the time was known as Fidonet and amazingly, their website still exists today--www.fidonet.org. The online collaboration and social networking aspect came in the form of the "message bases". Once logged on to a bbs, you could read and write messages in the hundreds of message bases which were then circulated among the thousands of bbs's around the world that were members of Fidonet. The message bases each had a specific topic ranging from social to entertainment to educational to technical to religious and on and on.

The sharing part came in the form of the "file bases". In fact, I dare say that the golden era of shareware programs came at the same point when bbs's were at their height in popularity. The file bases were the areas where a bbs user could download many different softwares on a try before you buy basis, hence the term "shareware". A interesting sidelight to file downloading then was that computer viruses were just starting to proliferate and there were not that many antivirus solutions available. I suppose we all just had to grin and bear, and kept our fingers tightly crossed.

Another attraction of the bbs's were the availability of online games. The games were nothing like today's which are almost realistic in their graphics and surround sound. The bbs games then were mostly text-based, but equally colorful and adventuresome. Like the message and file bases, the games that had tournaments in them were circulated around the world so you could be sitting in front of your computer in a remote island in the Pacific playing against someone living in the heart of London.

The drawback to accessing bbs's was the busy line. Most bbs's ran on only one phone line and if a user was hogging his/her online time, other users were denied access. We also mentioned above that connecting to a bbs could be cumbersome chore given a lot of requirements involved so the whole process was not too appealing to those who were not predisposed to going through the steps.

Remember too that internet access was not in the mainstream at the time so the exchange of messages, files and games were not done in real-time. Transporting the messages, files and games around the world was expensive. The highest modem speed that could have been achieved then was 28.8 Kbps so the more the messages and files and games, the longer time you had to spend connected to the internet provider. In short, it was quite expensive for the operator of bbs to maintain their systems and for the user, the experience could been frustrating especially when having to deal with busy phone lines. And yes, bbs's were mostly free for anyone to access. When the internet started to become mainstream, bbs's started to fade away.

So the next time you read something hyping the virtues of Web 2.0, there is no need to get too carried away. The trail had been blazed, albeit in a manner not as sophisticated as today's web is capable of. Indeed the ability to collaborate in almost real-time and the eye-catching presentations Web 2.0 can deliver could not have been achieved back then, but the elements are essentially the same. If not for anything else, Web 2.0 has provided a nice little stroll down memory lane.