What Are the Key Elements of a Modem?

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By the end of the 19 seventies in the us, the telephone net work is really robust. It's highly reliable. But it was opened around the edges so that you could attach other devices to the system without permission. And one of those things you could attach was a modem. The earliesta systems we're talking about were dial up bulletin board systems. They are literally a computerization of the community bulletin board,. Like cork and pin system where people post notices to each other.

Paris Marx is joined by Kevin Driscoll to discuss the networks and services built by volunteers and hobbyists on top of the telephone network before the internet took over the in the 1990s, and what it can teach us about the internet and social media today.

Kevin Driscoll is the author of The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media and an associate professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Follow Kevin on Twitter at @kevindriscoll.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

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