Before the Internet exploded, there were only a handful of places your modem could dial and connect to. For me, it was either the local University to access the Gopher system, or the local BBS.
Later on, I ran my own BBS for a while and became somewhat familiar with the software that was out there for running a bulletin board system. That was when I first heard about MajorBBS. MajorBBS was one of the best and most advanced BBS systems available. A true taste of what the future would be like when it came to online computing. Wikipedia has a nice (albeit short) history of Major BBS and the guy who created it, Tim Stryker.
It is a sad tale of the Internet killing the BBS star, but it is a story worth telling. A nostalgic tale about the glory days of the Internet frontier, and the casualties that paved the way for the mighty Information Superhighway. This is the kind of stuff that should be made into movies for us nerds.
When the Internet train came to town, it left a few pioneers behind.
urban tornado 