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Showing posts with the label William S Burroughs

The First Post on a "Social Network"

Remember BBS? Remember the Well? The first BBS was the Community Memory BBS, and its first post is printed in memoriam below (this was posted in 1973, nearly 40 years ago), entered via a teletype machine stored inside a cardboard box with holes cut out for your hands and stored in the back of a record store. The moniker used by the typist, Dr Benway, is a recurring character in the novels of William S Burroughs - leading some of us to believe (with good humor and high spirits) that since its inception, the network as social medium has always veered a bit subversively. From here we have gone to Twitter and Facebook users coordinating the overthrow of governments, in sudden paroxysms of sweeping change and violence. Perhaps there is a bit of that encoded somewhere in this early missive. ***** IEF XQPRSTQXL SYSPRINT OFFSET INTERRUPT ***** APPLIESTO: ALL BOOGIES, BEANERS, BOLOS & BOZOS ...... DOC BENWAY HERE .......... NURSE, SLIP ME ANOTHER AMPULE OF LAUDANUM ....