To anticipate the obvious criticism: No, FidoNet wasn't ever going to replace the pre-Web Internet. ARPAnet had first-mover advantage & $$$.
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Replying to @St_Rev
What FidoNet shows is large-scale networking wasn't a mysterious discovery that needed a Manhattan project. Hobbyists could half-ass it.
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Replying to @St_Rev
I'm not sure how really comparable those two things are. uucp was a lot closer in function to FidoNet.
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Replying to @mattskala
UUCP was thoroughly entangled with the early Internet, though. Ran on a lot of the same machines and pipelines. FidoNet was early PCs.
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Replying to @St_Rev
highly dependent on the telephone system, which was created in an environment of heavy federal regulation
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Replying to @mattskala @St_Rev
I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong. Only that the issue is not black-and-white and depends a lot on basically arbitrary definitions.
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Replying to @mattskala
Bell patented the telephone in 1876, era of federal regulation started in 1913. http://www.mackinac.org/6033
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Replying to @St_Rev
FIDOnet was decades later than that and dependent upon the widespread availability of no-charge local calling.
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Replying to @mattskala @St_Rev
impossible to say whether the network over which FIDOnet ran could have grown up without regulation, but it *did* grow up under regulation.
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Replying to @mattskala
In an era where the state hamhands everything, it's difficult to find things free of its touch, for obvious reasons.
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But, importantly, FIDOnet was free of state direction or funding.
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.