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WorldWeird: The original net revolution

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  1.  (10155.1)
    I remember the weird high of talking to Russian people via a modem and a BBS in the 80s, talking from Finland via a little box called a "modem", that was a secret between me, people in different countries, and nothing the government could even begin to understand.

    Then some of them started to talk about tanks.

    http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/about-the-net/Usenet/soviet.coup
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      CommentAuthorFrowardd
    • CommentTimeJun 6th 2012
     (10155.2)
    My school covered little enough american history let alone russian history, and this is complete news to me!

    here's a vid (thanks wikipedia!) with the fellow who wrote the article you linked: How the internet saved Russia from the hardliners
  3.  (10155.3)
    Back at the time it was massively awesome and interesting to follow this thing unfold. There were some BBS's that polled information from usenet, and I had been talking with people who had a net access in for example St. Petersburg. I was 16 then, a cyberpunk nerd, but even then I didn't fully realize how awesome it was to see history in the making through a completely new form of media.
  4.  (10155.4)
    Not quite the same thing, but I'm reminded of back in '99 when I first got onto the net. I used to visit a website run by a guy in Serbia. Then the Kosovo war broke out and the site went into semi-shutdown, with a note saying that he wasn't sure when he'd be able to maintain the site again, since his first priority was worrying about he or his family being blown up by a US bombing raid.

    He ended up coming through it OK, but it sort of brought home to me just how connected the internet was making us all.
  5.  (10155.5)
    I knew people who, just after Tiananmen were, chatting online with a friend in Beijing who excused himself for a minute to answer the door.

    Last I heard, which was several years later, the Chinese friend had never been heard from again.

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