I remember first learning about online gaming in the 90s and the idea lit my imagination on fire even then! How mindblowing must it have been to play in a shared world in the 80s, before you could even get the internet at home?

Things like Prestel, Minitel, Compunet, Q-Link and BBSes are endlessly fascinating to me. Even beyond early online gaming, the idea of telecomputing prior to home internet is borderline mythologised in my imagination. I think the internet, as a technology, is better. I think, despite how things have turned out recently, the World Wide Web has largely been a good thing. But these older, separated networks - and private BBSes in particular - feel cooler to me. The intentionality of connecting to specific machines, specific networks and being locked in for the duration of your stay. The 'net as a place that you can visit, and not something that surrounds you, always. Being on the frontier of a new form of communication that will one day fundamentally change the world as we know it.

I dunno. My affection isn't that deep. Shit just rocks.