Remembering the 1980s Through ASCII

Architecture and Background

Jason Scott - TEXTFILES, G-PHILES, AND LOG FILES: Remembering the 1980's Through ASCII In the 1980's, life started to move online, bringing with it all the wonder, terror, and breadth of human nature. Most markedly, an entire generation of teenagers turned their energies and efforts onto this growing culture and turned the world of Bulletin Board Systems into a combination street corner and clubhouse, sharing their knowledge, lying and bragging into infamy, and creating a shared experience that lasts in their hearts and minds to this day as they become the foundation of the Internet Society. While the unique forces that combined to make BBSes the experience they were have since shifted and formed other cultures in the years since, a feel for the 1980's can be found in the Textfiles (also known as g-files or 'philes') that nearly every self-respecting BBS traded, offered, or created as a matter of gaining notoriety (and more importantly, callers) in a sea of similar voices.

Vulnerability Analysis

In these textfiles, readers can reminisce or learn anew about what the BBS experience meant to those who lived through it, and easy parallels can be drawn to the 'scenes' that are now thriving online today. This talk will attempt to give historical perspective and narrative to the BBS 'scene' of the 1980's, presented by a user who was around for a good portion of it and took notes. Expect shouted refutations from the audience and eerily familiar battles waged across the message boards to live again.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

Jason Scott (Formerly The Slipped Disk) has been an observer and participant in the world of BBSs since about 1982, cutting his teeth on Boards such as OSUNY, Sherwood Forest II and III, Milliways/Outland, The Dark Side of The Moon AE/BBS, as well as hundreds of others. His experience in BBS culture of the 80's ranges from Compuserve and The Source to Deversi-dials, AE Lines and anything else that gave a carrier when you called it. He is best known as the SysOp of The Works BBS, a textfile-only board that he ran from 1986-1988 before switching to SysOp-At-Large from 1989 to the present.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

Realizing an entire generation's shared lore was being diluted and lost, he has started the site www.textfiles.com, dedicated to preserving all things ASCII from the 1980's. This web site is slowly killing him. DEF CON 7.0 was held July 9-11th, 1999, in Las Vegas Nevada USA