Jason Scott is a collector of bits. Mostly bits from the 80s. Back in the 80s and early 90s, bits didn’t travel that far or easily. There was Internet, but it was only accessible by a handful of American academics. Us, mortal beings had to be content with sneakernet and BBS’s. So collectors of those bits should be treated with the utmost respect. They are archaeologists.
One of the remnants of the age of BBS’s is the digital newsletter. It was available in many formats, from plain text to fully interactive, visually overwhelming presentations. One newsletter that Jason has collected for you is GIF News. While simple by today’s standards, those documents happen to perfectly capture the Zeitgeist of that era and are therefore required reading for anyone interested in where this Internet all came from.
As discussed in Jason’s blogpost, it is hard to correctly represent those newsletters. I would suggest Flickr’s full-screen slideshow mode. Start on the Flickr slideshow of the set and immediatly click on the full screen button in the bottom right corner.
Time for some digital archeology.