When Connecting to Another Computer Was an Event

There was a time when connecting one computer to another was not something that happened automatically in the background. You decided to make the connection, launched communications software, told a modem what number to dial, listened to the call go through, and waited to see whether the machine at the other end answered. If everything worked, the result might be a BBS, an online service, a university computer, a corporate system, or some other remote host. If it did not, you might get a busy signal, a failed handshake, garbage on the screen because the settings were wrong, or no connection at all. The important difference from modern networking was not merely speed. Connecting had a cost in time, money, equipment, and often inconvenience. Those constraints shaped what people did online and how online systems themselves were designed. The Telephone Network Was the Network For most home computer users in the early dial-up era, the practical communications network was the ordinary…

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