100 Ideas that Changed the Web

Antisocial phreaks get social

IDEA N^o 12

BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEMS

Twenty years before the Web and 30 years before Facebook, an antisocial hacker put his computer on the internet and invited people to visit. He had created the first computerized bulletin board system (BBS).

The WELL, an acronym for ‘Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link’, was the Bulletin Board of the Whole Earth Catalog (shown above). A regular meeting place for fans of the Grateful Dead, it was where John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore and Mitch Kapor met, founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (see The Independence of Cyberspace).

Ward Christensen created the first BBS during a blizzard ...