2020-06-05 Pubnix Sysadmin Interviews

As a new phase in the Public Access Unix System History Project, I have been
interviewing sysadmins of various systems and will be publishing them online.
The interviews will be published entirely in off-web locations, both here in my
circumlunar.space gopher hole[1] and in my geminarium on rawtext.club[2].  The
interviews are starting with sysadmins of extant systems, but will hopefully
extend to past systems as well.
 
# What is the Public Access Unix System History Project?

Public Access Unix Systems (pubnixes) have been around since the early 1980s,
before the WWW and even before the commercial Internet.  The early systems were
computers run by hobbyists at home.  Users would connect to them via modems
over POTS phone lines.  A great documentary exists about BBSes from this era,
but far less is recorded about the pubnixes.  The Public Access Unix System
History Project was established to fill this gap.  The Project is still in its
infancy and consists primarily of summary writings and a database that records
historical (and present day) pubnixes.  A location has not yet been identified
for the Pubnix Museum and Smithsonian funding has not yet been secured.

# Why is the Project Important?

Attention on pubnixes tends to revolve around the services provided (IRC,
email, web hosting, etc), or around the community that develops among users.
But pubnixes are possibly more important because they represent support for the
non-commercial Internet.  In fact, the culture of many pubnixes is one of
active resistance against the surveillance capitalism, the propaganda and
disinformation, the consumer manipulation, and the breeding ground of hatred
that exists on the commercial WWW.

Corporate financed mainstream news and social media on the WWW are poison to
society.  They have no incentive to promote environmental and social
sustainability.  Instead they feed on turmoil.  Turmoil keeps people reading
more and coming back often in fear of missing something important, all the
while being fed advertisements.  Turmoil activates impulsive responses from
users, making them easier to manipulate than people who are in thoughtful
control of themselves.

We need alternative, non-commercial internet media, and pubnixes can support
this goal in at least two ways.  For one, pubnixes offer an environment, often
described as radically inclusive, for people (albeit technically inclined
people) to socialize and organize with each other.  Another way pubnixes
support non-commercial Internet media is by serving as a training ground for
developers and sysadmins.  These developers and sysadmins may go on to support
other tools and services for the non-commercial Internet.

The Pubnix Sysadmin Interviews is intended to shed light on the diversity of
pubnixes online now (and maybe in the past too) and the people who run them.

# How Can You Get Involved in the History Project?

Interested in computing or Internet history?  If you would like to support the
Pubnix History Project, there are several ways you can help out.  You can help
document information about systems and the people who run or ran them.  Whether
you were around in the 1980s and early 1990s, or if you're a newcomer to the
scene, there is a lot of information to compile and check.

If you have first hand experience or compelling thoughts about pubnixes, write
them down and publish them!  You may think "everyone already knows this" or
"nobody cares what I think", but that's not true.  (Well, sometimes it might be
true, but you'd be surprised how often it's not true.)

Make connections.  If you know sysadmins or users of pubnixes, ask them to
contact the History Project and record their experiences.  

If you would like to support the project in these or any other way, contact me
if you would like to discuss: cmccabe[AT]rawtext[DOT]club

# Coming Soon...

I have a handful of interviews already in a state of semi-completion and they
will be published soon.  I will maintain a table of contents here[1] and in my
RTC geminarium[2], so check back.

---

[1] gopher://circumlunar.space/1/~cmccabe/

[2] gemini://rawtext.club/~cmccabe -- if you're not yet familiar with the
gemini protocol[3], hopefully this will be incentive for you to learn and try
it out.

[3] https://gemini.circumlunar.space