Back in the late 80s, my mom bought me a 386sx 16MHz computer equipped with a 2400 baud modem. It was my first computer that enabled me to connect to an online world. Back then, there was large behemoths like AOL and CompuServe but there were also independent services called bulletin board systems, aka BBSs. A BBS was somewhat of a one-to-one connection. Most independent BBSs had only one or two phone lines with which someone could dial into. They were little islands of community that one could...