That was the Fidonet address of the computer bulletin board I ran in the early 1990s. I ran it for the Regional Reporters Association, a fairly self-explanatory organization of Washington reporters, and the computer that hosted the board sat in the corner of my bedroom on Capitol Hill. I got to run it because I was the only reporter around at the time who could configure and run the thing — and, hey, I threw in the computer for free.

There was no real digital news business then. Sure, a few online providers like Prodigy would throw up some wire service articles, and somebody had to make sure those feeds were working, but the Web hadn’t even been invented yet. But my computer was part of a crude, yet clever, worldwide network of machines. Every night, a call would come in to the modem hooked up to the computer, and I’d send and receive a packet of messages on various topics. They were echoed all over the world via a hub-and-spoke distribution system that worked entirely by phone.

Slowly, the (pre-Web) Internet seeped in, as people realized that it was a cheaper way of moving around data than having thousands of computers robo-call each other every night. You had to learn basic Linux commands and work off a command line interface, but it was a far more efficient way of moving around data. Internet and Fidonet functions began to cross — my first real Internet email address was randy.lilleston@157.n109.z1.fidonet.org — and it quickly became clear that Fidonet’s most important days were behind it.

Fidonet somehow survived, and still does to this day. It was strung together largely by amateurs for the fun of it. By modern standards, it is the equivalent of two cans and a string. But Back In The Day, it was a great tool for me to learn about the nascent online world.