The Cutting Edge: Computing / Technology / Innovation : Master of FidoNet’s BBS Linkup System Champions Freedom of Electronic Mail
If you think Fido is just an unimaginative name for a dog, you haven’t been spending enough time in cyberspace. FidoNet is a clever way of linking local computer bulletin boards, the increasingly popular services that allow people with common interests to exchange electronic messages and access other information via their personal computers.
With FidoNet, electronic messages can hop from one small bulletin board service (BBS) to another. The system spans the country, allowing a message to pass coast-to-coast for the cost of a local telephone call.
FidoNet has thus harnessed the communal leanings of many BBS operators, establishing a kind of poor man’s Internet. Today there are approximately 34,000 FidoNet “nodes”--bulletin boards that use Fido protocols and agree to relay information--with coverage around the globe.
To keep up with developments, there is a FidoNet newsletter and even an electronic discussion group on the Internet comp.org.fidonet. This year is the 10th anniversary of Fido, which started out as a software program for operating one of the original computer bulletin boards. Its creator, Tom Jennings, basically gave away the program as part of his philosophy of “radical communications.” We spoke with Jennings in his office in San Francisco.
*
Q: Tell me about the beginnings of Fido.
*
A: I went through 12 major revisions (of the software) and hundreds of minor ones. At that time, my friend Randy Bush up in Portland, Ore., documented the FidoNet protocols. We wanted to make them more public. A couple of people started to write clones. It’s sort of amusing to note that two of the first three authors were gay troublemaker types. Sort of set a lot of the tone for FidoNet stuff.
*
Q: How would you say that affected FidoNet?
*
A: I am not going to trust my neighbors for my ability to communicate. If your neighbors don’t like you, they can shun you and you disappear. That is how gay people and other people who are deemed to be undesirable are basically shunned out of existence.
In FidoNet, the ability to communicate is a physical ability to communicate. You can’t shut someone up. That’s the beauty of it. It was designed that way. I can set up a bulletin board at my house for instance, and you cannot stop me from sending mail--short of knocking my door down.
*
Q: You call yourself a “radical troublemaker.” What kind of trouble do you make?
*
A: Just making sure that everyone can communicate. I had the honor, as I call it, of defending this quite rabid, quite idiotic fundamentalist Christian nut case. He was writing these really poorly written articles in the FidoNet newsletter. They just weren’t coherent and legible--it didn’t have anything to do with content.
He was so hate-filled and so troublemaking that he was being kicked out of the networks and they were trying to refuse to run his stuff. As editor, we had these rules: If it fits various physical and legal criteria, it will run. Regardless of content. Regardless of how infuriating it is.
*
Q: How did it feel being in that position?
*
A: I thought it was hilariously funny. I mean, the guy infuriated me to no end. But at some point he became so extreme that it was kind of hard to take him very seriously. Censorship is never good. I don’t think any speech or any information should ever be suppressed for any reason whatsoever.
*
Q: Does FidoNet then provide something that the other networks don’t?
*
A: First of all, it’s providing connectivity. Most of the planet simply can’t afford direct connections to the Internet (the massive “network of networks” originally funded by the federal government to connect universities and government research laboratories). It’s exceedingly complex. It’s really nice but it ain’t cheap. It takes a whole lot of infrastructure. If you do stuff that’s unpopular, you’ll find that your hosts don’t really want to carry you. *
Q: Do you think FidoNet has engendered more open communication?
*
A: There’s still a great hump to get over: the ability to spend $1,000 or whatever on a computer and a modem and a phone line and to be able to buy your own time to use it. Just 1% of the planet has (such resources).
*
Q: So you’re saying that access to technology is the issue?
*
A: The only thing that always bothers me about media coverage (of technology and communications) in general is that it says, “One day we’ll all have this, and it’s all great,” and it is great to various degrees. But the access issue is really a big deal.
It’s a big party spoiler. You drag it out and people go, “Oh, well that’s no fun to talk about.” Because it’s not any fun to talk about. It’s expensive. It’s also wrapped around this really normal white culture thing that’s oppressive in its very nature to a lot of people.
*
Q: How do you mean it’s wrapped around that?
*
A: I mean right down to every paradigm in e-mail ever done: Messages look like interoffice memos, files in file cabinets on desktops. What level do you want to start at?
*
Q: Do you view technology as neutral?
*
A: No. I wouldn’t call it neutral-- neutral is not the right word. Neutral implies it’s benign. It’s like a knife: It has two edges. Its position changes where you’re looking, how you’re looking, who you are, what side of the knife you’re on.
It’s got good aspects. Some things, like telephones, you could say are a good thing. Hopefully networking will end up being so. Whatever form it actually takes, it certainly won’t be e-mail in front of a screen and a keyboard.
*
Q: What’s the best thing about networking for you?
*
A: It’s a big intellectual thrill of this giant bunch of machinery doing basically indeterminate things. It’s cool that Cambridge, England, is 15 milliseconds away. It has become a giant machine that covers the planet.
*
Q: What’s the future of FidoNet?
*
A: I have no idea. Things come and go; I doubt it’ll have a cataclysmic ending. It’ll probably just mutate into something else.
Biobox
* Name: Tom Jennings
* Position: Founder, FidoNet
* Age: 38
* Self-description: “Radical troublemaker”
* Company: The Little Garden (provides electronic mail connections between local bulletin board services; company was named after the restaurant where the business was conceived)
* Education: Franklin High School, Franklin, Mass.
* When not computing: Travels in his 30-year-old propane-powered Rambler.
