"Nudity and pornography were quite 'verboten' in those calvinistic days; even some of the so-called 'subversive literature' readily available on many BBSes might have resulted in you accidentally falling down a flight of stairs while in police custody a scant five years before."
The BBS that kept Serbia informed while NATO was lobbing bombs all over the place
Political conversations weren't uncommon on SezamPro and its predecessor (as can be seen from this lengthy list of comments taken immediately before Yugoslavia fell apart), but the bombings took things to a whole new level.This role of the SezamPro chat lasted during the entire War. Night after night, the chat brought together a number of members of the system, up to one hundred of them, which was the highest number of participants the service could technically support. They chatted during the night, since that was the time when NATO attacks were predominantly performed. Chat sessions usually started just after the air raid alarms and together with the first explosions the number of participants increased. As soon as an explosion was heard, new chatters would join, asking: "What did they hit?" The Sezam's "alternative net of reporters" would then try to identify what had been hit. The participants from different parts of the city were giving eyewitness reports. An internal scale on the intensity of explosion was established, so the mark 10 meant that the window glass broke, 9 that the window glass shook, 8 that the explosion was very strong but with no obvious consequences and down to mark 1, which meant the situation was peaceful.
— Nancy Hafkin, a onetime leader of the Pan African Development Information System, discussing with Wired her role in helping launch the internet on the African continent. Hafkin, seeing how poor the alternatives were (people were accessing databases by sending letters through the mail!), was inspired with her team to take steps to encourage digital uptake—including the creation of dial-up systems to access data and some hard-nosed battles with monopolistic telecom systems that were limiting early internet access. "Up until 1995, there were only four countries that had full 24-hour internet connectivity," Hafkin told the publication. "It dawned on us that we could influence policy and move forward telecommunications technology.""All the countries of the continent were supplying information to databases and we wanted people to access all the information stored in them. At that time there was not a single public library in Ethiopia."
How Peter Gabriel helped the internet gain its global reputation
It's strange to think about the fact that the internet didn't instantaneously turn on one day for the entire world, that there were significant growing pains at a time when Growing Pains was still on the air in the US and we had no idea Kirk Cameron was religious.Logically, it makes sense. Disruptive technologies like air conditioning, telephones, and light bulbs took decades to reach the bulk of people in the US alone.But we've been sold on this idea, this vision that the internet is global and always has been. And when we hear about Serbia's early challenges in getting an internet connection or the idea that a bunch of NGOs did the dirty work in getting Ghana online, we're not sure what to think.It feels like there's a disconnect somewhere. Within us.