************************************************
************************************************

Unfortunately, this site has restricted functionality as this browser does not support the HTML button formaction attribute.

Unfortunately, this site has restricted functionality as this browser has HTML web storage turned off.

Kevin Driscoll, Demography and Decentralization: Measuring the Bulletin Board Systems of North America

2 of 58 files pdf

2020 June 18

Kevin Driscoll
For many home computer enthusiasts of the 1980s and 1990s, a local dial-up bulletin board system, or BBS, provided the first opportunity to get online, chat with strangers, share files, and play games. But how many is “many”? Was BBSing limited to a few elite geeks, or did it reach broader populations? Lacking any central record-keeping authority, the demography of dial-up BBSs is difficult to ascertain. To estimate the number of systems and the size of the user population, this study draws on a mix of incomplete sources. Regional lists of bulletin board systems indicate the geographic growth of the decentralized BBS network; a questionnaire circulated by the U.S. Census reveals a partial snapshot of the user population; and market statistics published in the trade press reflect its commercial expansion. In spite of their limitations, a statistical analysis of these data provides a first-order approximation of North American BBS demographics, suggesting a scale comparable to better-known contemporary systems such as ARPANET or CompuServe. Further development of this methodology will enable the production of historical demography across networks, regions, platforms, and language groups.
Preview screenshot of the production