You Supported The Revolution

Back in the early days of the computer revolution the first mate made “Support the Revolution Buy A Computer” Ts. My slogan – her effort. That was back when I was helping Ward Christensen and Randy Suess get up the World’s First BBS. A precursor of the Internet. Here is what I had to say at the “Support the Revolution…” link:

In ’77 or ’78 my wife and I printed T-shirts with an R2 like unit and the motto “Support the Revolution, Buy a Computer”. Around that time I desigened and produced the I/O board that went into the world’s first BBS. Leading to the personal computer/communications revolution and finally the Internet.

Never have I been prouder of my contribution than in these days of war. With so many false and misleading reports we can now have communities of scholars and just plain folks involved in real understanding and an attempt to get at the truth.

The liars and idiots don’t stand a chance.

My original vision was a community of scholars and Nobel prize winners communicating with each other to advance human knowledge. The broader base we have now is much better. Way much better than my original vision. At least I was headed in the right direction. I called my vision the Draco System.

The liars of the media will be dying a slow death. They will be strangled by the truth. Slow and painful. Just the way I like it.

As a closer to the year 2013 Reason Magazine echoes my sentiment and amplifies on it. Here are the final paragraphs of their piece:

But what 2013 showed us is that as Internet technology advances, the direct and indirect costs that the state must incur to maintain a same level of information control continues to increase. This means that the margin on which information can be effectively controlled is also shrinking continuously.

As a result, while the Internet can, no doubt, be regulated, and information can be controlled, and those who speak and transact can be punished, it can only be done on an increasingly small margin, and at an increasingly high cost. This dynamic is inherent in, and determined by, the nature of the Internet, and it can only get stronger in 2014.

As usual the comments to the Reason piece are entertaining and occasionally informative.


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2 responses to “You Supported The Revolution”

  1. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    I don’t go back quite that far. However, I’ve written code on a PDP 11/04 with 4k of core just to be able to say I’ve done it. Fun part of core – you can power down in the middle of executing and power back up to where you stopped.

    BBS were fun, blogs aren’t quite the same. Any Boston area people out there remember the Boston Bullet?

    -The Skull Bearer

  2. captain*arizona Avatar
    captain*arizona

    There were better revolutions to support. I know I supported them!