What they were saying in 1983 on the internet

Amazing how many people still find it so hard to believe that the Internet existed back then. Now I was not into computers as a kid back then but I had a C64 in 1983 though I played games on it basically. I loved playing the original Flight Simulator on it though. Ancient graphics by todays standards but state of the art at the time. My brothers nerdy friend had a Tandy machine back in 83 he was a member of the original Compuserve. He had all the gadgets. He used to post to BBS's and as I recall he used to post to Usenet as well. So kiddies, Internet life started long before the World Wide Web and AOL.

 

Obi-Wan: That boy was our last hope
Yoda: No, there is another...

OK, call me an idiot, please, but I have forever thought Yoda was referring to Leia... but somebody on that 1983 message board said Yoda was referring to Vader.

The possibility that Yoda sensed Vader would be the one to eventually bring balance is a cool thought to me, becuase ultimately, he's right. Having seen the prequels now, we know Yoda saw some good in Anakin ... maybe he never totally lost that hope.

Stupid mind trip.

 

I'm just waiting for all these younglings who are so doubtful of these to be around twenty years from now defending posts archived from the JCF and explaining why everything can look as updated as the floating 3-d projected text that the rest of the Internet looks like at that point.

I can't personally testify to 1983 (though I know the usegroups existed then), but I can tell you from personal experience that there was an active online usegroup community by '84-'85 or so (when I finally got a C64, modem, and a phone line of my own so my mom didn't have a fit that I was BBSing all night long). I didn't really participate much in the SW groups until about '87-89 (the 10th anniversary sparked interest in people who had otherwise gone otherground) and really didn't get too involved until around the rec.arts.sf.starwars days (still preferred local boards or online services like QLink or TSN because relying on a BBS to update stuff to a usegroup was hit and miss...sometimes you'd reply and the post had been answered fifty times from people all around the world before yours got there).

But many of the topics dicussed here have been bantered over across the 'internet' for well over a decade. Many of the 'great finds' people seem to come up with and discover, many of the new thoughts, many of the 'cool' (usually silly) concepts people have conjured here for either the OT or conjecturally about the PT were brought up before some people here were even born. Yep, we knew about the 1138 significance and the stormtrooper banging his head, etc. No, I not being high and mighty (it actually makes me feel old to think about it all )....it's actually a great testament to Star Wars that it can continue to generate debates on the same subject.

I also like how this validates some of the 'crazy talk' you hear out of us old timers (like the nine movie deal, which while Lucas hasn't said isn't true anymore, he HAS said that Star Wars is really Anakin's story, which implies that we only need the six movies...unless Anakin returns as an action ghost for the last three with a necessary character development ). Now some of you might understand why some of us put as little faith in what George says is his true vision today since tomorrow it'll be something completely different.

 

Man that was fun to read...If it's "fake" it sure resembles the kinds of comments and debates we had back then...

Oh, and if the "internet didn't exist" back in the 80's, I guess how Matthew Broderick hacked into computer systems in WARGAMES was via magic pixey dust! If my memory serves me right, the internet itself has been around since 1969. Our ability to get onto it came much later.

 

I was reading a post about how Return of the Jedi could also mean the return of Anakin Skywalker and I was like "Wow, I never thought of it that way!"

 

Handmaiden writes:
Ok, so perhaps people had the ability to post back in 1983, but I doubt that the message board would have looked that updated (which, in 2005, looks outdated but for back then I don't think it would have looked that "high-tech").

What it looked like is irrelevent. Usenet was functionally equivalent to any web based board today, using a format somewhat more primitive than the modern variation of NNTP, but still sophisticated enough to allow hierarchical threads of topical messages and replies. It was easy enough to use as well - I used a Usenet client that was developed just prior to the adoption of RFC 977, and let me tell you, it was easier to use over telnet or in shell than just about any web board!

Still not sure I believe this.

Whether you believe it or not, Usenet has been in fairly wide use since the early 80s, and dates back even further.

 

I haven't read all of it, but these two posts are right on:

"I'm pretty sure that Episodes I, II, and II will be
about Anakin (Darth Vader) Skywalker and how he was drawn to the
Dark Side of the force (what is the offer he couldn't refuse?)"

How the heck did he know Anakin was offered something he couldn't refuse? The ability to keep people from dying (Padme) is the answer to this question!!! Holy cow!!!

and this one:

"(*where* are they
going to find someone good enough to play Alec Guiness (pardon me, Ben
Kenobi) as a young man??)"

They had to wait 20 years to find someone good enough to play a young Alec Guinness (pardon me, Ben Kenobi). Ewan MacGregor anyone? he's SO GOOD as obi-wan. HAHA YEAH!!!!

This is amazing. I've wasted too much time reading this thread (the TFN one) so I have to get back to work, but i'm going to read this later.

 

What the hell is this all about?

"You may not have noticed it,
but as Han and Chewie were trying to
rescue Lando, you could see Boba Fatt trying
to fly out of the monster, being held in
by one of the 'tentacles' (which later tried
to pull Lando in). "

 

The original newsgroup 'message boards' were very 'low-tech' text only.

Right. If anyone wants to see what they looked like... open a DOS windo on your system to get roughly the same effect. No graphics. No colors. No fonts. No nothin'. But at least it was a step up from before monitors were widely used and everything was printed out in hardcopy. =P

 

I think most people are getting the term "internet" in their heads and thinking it could not have existed in 1983. And that is true according to the official definition of Internet set forth in 1995:

FNC Resolution:
Definition of "Internet"
10/24/95
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On October 24, 1995, the FNC unanimously passed a resolution defining the term Internet. This definition was developed in consultation with the leadership of the Internet and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Communities.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RESOLUTION:

"The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term "Internet".
"Internet" refers to the GLOBAL information system that --

(i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons;

(ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and

(iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein."

The "global" aspect was not in play in 1983 as well as the search engines. However, as it has been pointed out, communication was still possible over land lines. The terminology being used here is the only debatable issue, as I tried to point out several pages ago.

 

I'm laughing my ass off to all those people on this forum to refuse to believe the internet was around in 1983. Have you even read the history of the internet that some people here have been pasting info from?

Sheesh! Some people are so ignorant and they refuse to be told they're wrong!

And if anyone wonders why google have these posts archived, I can tell you that google went online with almost the entire usenet history a few years back.

Personally I've been using the internet since 1990 (no, the web wasn't invented back then), but I've got friends who were running usenet-servers in the early 80s.

 

DARK_VADOR:
"Sometimes I wonder if the prequels would be better received if the internet never exsisted."

I couldn't agree with you more. Except I think it goes far beyond the prequels. Seems NOTHING is good anymore. Everything either sucks, or is the greatest creation in the cognitive history of mankind.

I always "enjoy" the defamation of the prequels in light of the OT. I have watched the OT numerous times over since TPM came out and was subsequently deemed to be total garbage compared to those three, based on a lifetime of nostalgia. And while it may NOT be a good film in a lot of ways, using the OT as paragons of filmmaking virtue to hold it against is a bit far-fetched.

Oh well. No matter what, some peope will ALWAYS find something completely unimportant to complain about. What I love is the post about using the force to stay alive being a pathway to the dark side. Precognition, or a candidate to sue George for stealing his idea?

On the Weird Al issue:
http://www.weirdal.com/rcdgdate.htm
This page contains this line:
"Late-80 - Yoda - Dr.Demento Basement Tapes #6 (12-97)"
I had no idea until I investigated it after seeing the post on the google archive of the 83 boards. And it's on Al's official site, so I wager he's got it right.

 

what I find funny is...who are we talking to? The last page or so is a bunch of us - in the know - reminding whomever of when the internet was created. I'm in here too, but I have this funny image of people standing in a room "what's a-matter with these people?" while those who have no clue have already left the room. Maybe their brains exploded from their new knowledge.

 

I find it amusing that back then, people complained about the "fakeness of the puppets" and immediatly decided that Lucas had sold out to money, creating more "cute" characters.


Now people complain of CGI and long for the puppets...

very funny.

gravi-sleds = Speeder bikes!

 

People who don't believe there was an internet in 83=people who don't beleive Palpatine and Sidious are the same person.

 

What a Great find!

 

This is a great thread...it should be on the first page...

 

Whoooaaaaa!!
Techno wrote: please do a little research and educate themselves before it's too late, i.e. before embarassing themselves in person. It's bad enough you are embarassing yourself on an anonymous internet message board but imagine your chagrin when you try to impress a nice looking, well-read female with your absurd contention.

Personal attacks are not neccessary, I am actually at work earning money for my wife and two children and happen to be an a break so I don't have the time to go on a rant as you have but my statement rings true.
The precursors to todays net were in place but the internet as we know did not exist. This is true.Your comparing the Wright Brothers flight with the Concorde, that's all I'm saying. Both deal with flight but they're worlds apart.

I do have a friend who passed along some interesting info about windows resetting to 1983 after battery expiration that I thought I would share. The resident computer nerd line was cut and pasted from his e-mail.
Lighten up. ROTS opens today! [/]

According to your own allegory, to say that "the internet didn't exist" in 1983 is to say that airplanes didn't exist when the Wright Brothers flew.

The ignorance of all this would be sad if it weren't so humorous. The word "internet" refers specifically to the inter-networking of computers. The term that wasn't available back then was "intranet" because the idea of having your computer(s) networked was considered a local operation to begin with--the idea of linking your network with another in an inter-networked topology was rare and expensive but not unheard of. The military started with the ARPANET and colleges jumped on board until a internetworking protocol was established. Here's a hint: the protocol was called IP--Internet Protocol, and that's the protocol we are using even now. Message boards like this one were based on the concepts developed in the 70's and 80's with Usenet and a few others. I used FIDOnet back in the day, which later had gateways to IP and Usenet...but that was only about 12 years ago and the internet was quite well developed by then--it just was only known by a nerdy elite few.

j00 g0tz pwn3d, n00b.

 

Proof positive that no one remembers there history. This was a story here at tfn four years ago. Here's the proof:


http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/googlecom_and_return_of_the_jedi_69652.asp


Copy and paste this for proof that this is real- unless tfn is part of the conspiracy.

 

Why are we still talking about this? It's real...get over it...and enjoy.

 

i'll believe it because all of the posts are by men.

 

I was on the net before the web. Words like "spoilers" came into common usage much later. Looks fake to me.

 

Why are we still talking about this? It's real...get over it...and enjoy.



I gave up on this thread on page 1

 

Well then, if it is real, it's fascinating to see some of the similarities between discussions back then and discussions today...

 

"I was on the net before the web. Words like "spoilers" came into common usage much later. Looks fake to me."

Wrong. I searched Google Usenet posts for the word 'spoiler' and got 537 hits for the time between 1981 and 1983

Results 1 - 100 of 537 from Jan 1, 1981 to Dec 31, 1983 for spoiler

Please note that I also searched for a common word ("movie") and got 1840 hits, so the count for "spoiler" is significant.

I was on Usenet in 1986 and it looks real to me.