TEXTFILES.COM-RELATED LINKS

If you like what I'm doing with TEXTFILES.COM, then there is a good chance you might like some of these suggested sites and additional reading that I consider worth your time. I'm not the only one working to capture an era.

Suggested Other Sites...

John Stevenson's Hacker/Culture page is incredible, a real amazing approach to talking about his times with computers in the 1980's and 1990's. From his clever browser tricks to his insisting on bringing you as deep into his experience as possible, this site really takes advantage of today's technology to tell you about yesterday. Plus, he has direct capture screens of BBSes from his first logins, something most people have long lost or deleted. And he's a great writer, too. We're on divergent paths and approaches, but his shines brightly.

Nomadic Research Labs is the home of Steven K. Roberts, who was the original Techno-Nomad. When I was sneaking onto Compuserve in my teens, I would find these incredible stories of a man pedaling a bike across the country and writing on his laptop about all the wonderful things he'd run into. It was truly inspiring. In fact, a collection of some of these stories is on this archive. But if you want to do yourself a favor, stop by his site and read about him and pick up a copy of his book, which chronicles his first incredible journey across America. It's a wonderful story to read and if you want a book on your shelf that really captures that Technology and Wonder and the Reality of Life feeling that textfiles might give you, this is the book.

The Nifty Erotic Stories Archive contains over 9,700 erotic stories of all types and persuasions, many of which were saved off of BBSs of the 1980's. It is very likely I have a few of these stories myself, but they have many, many more.

Acheron.org is a very well-maintained news and file archive, dedicated to of all things ANSI artwork (Packs) Graphics (Hi-rez) and new stories and textfiles (Lit), showing that the culture of creating new and interesting takes using technology is very much alive and well, and worth seeing.

The Official 5.25" Disk Sleeve Archive is a awe-inspiring collection of the unique and interesting paper sleeves that would house 5 1/4" floppy disks for the vast majority of home computers of the 80's. While one might recall that non-commercial disks all came in plain sleeves, looking over this archive will change that notion immediately. If you lived and used computers through that time, this archive brings back memory after memory. Fantastic.

Suggested Reading...

Please note: My links lead to the online bookseller amazon.com because I happen to like them and am a big customer of theirs. I don't get money for linking to them and you are encouraged to purchase these books via any means you want, or to go to your local library and read them.

The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling is one of the few books written that comes close to portraying the many cultural forces that led to the BBS world of the 1980's. He gives a great feeling for the stories behind the events, and I think he really captures the moods that I feel when I look back at this time. This book is available for free on the Internet (and possibly even my site) but it's a great book to have on your shelf anyway.

Good Friends

ROTTEN.COM is run by one of the SysOps of the Dark Side of the Moon and contains some of the most graphic, shocking, over-the-top imagery available on the Internet. Our intended audiences probably don't overlap all that much, but if you decide you need some pictures you'll never forget, this is the site for you.

This section will be growing. Send mail to jason if you can suggest further sites for him to browse and books to read.