Item Details

Description

The Community Memory records next hit contain material authored and collected by members of the Community Memory Project. The collection spans 1974 to 2000, with the bulk of the material being from 19694 to 1991. Parts of the collection that were created by employees and users of CM include administrative records, promotional material, discussion board printouts, usage statistics, designs and specifications, and manuals and training records. CM's administrative records document a wide variety of activities devoted to running the nonprofit, including material related to planning and research, finance, funding, legal issues, and personnel. There is also a small amount of unprocessed audiovisual material.

The promotional parts of the collection are mostly composed of overviews summarizing CM's mission and functions and articles and clippings featuring CM. Also included in the collection are printouts of messages and dialogue written at CM terminals by users, along with directories and indices that were made to collate posts about certain topics together. Related to these discussion board printouts are the usage statistics that were also printed by CM members documenting how people used the terminals and what kind of searches and messages they wrote to browse and interact with other users. Material that reveals how the terminals were set up and operated are contained in the "designs and specifications" series and records relating to the training of CM users, volunteers, and employees are contained in the "manuals and training records."

The parts of this collection that were collected, but not created, by the CM community are made up of reports and essays, computing manuals, books, conference and workshop material, and articles and newsletters. The majority of the non-CM essays, books, and articles reflect the sociopolitical ethos of CM in that they focus on social issues in computing, including works on gender, economics, power, and community and how those topics intersect with technology. The computing manuals of this collection are primarily related to Plexus systems, Unix, and the C programming language.

Biographical/Historical Note

Community Memory (CM) was the first computer-based public bulletin board, operating from 1973 through 1992 with most terminals located in public spaces in Berkeley, California, such as libraries, senior centers, co-ops, and laundromats. Born out of the Free Speech and countercultural movements of the 1960s, CM's purpose was to provide a free community-based space that linked people together through the unmediated sharing of ideas and knowledge, collective planning, and classified ads via messages and discussion forums.

Working as a nonprofit called Resource One Inc., which was dedicated to making computers available to the counterculture, Lee Felsenstein, Efrem Lipkin, Ken Colstad, and other developers created CM using a donated mainframe computer. The terminals, which consisted of a computer display and keyboard that was originally housed in a cardboard box, then later in a wooden one, were networked and messages were indexed, making all content available and searchable on any CM machine at any location. While messages were free to read, adding a message cost 25 cents. Posting could be anonymous or signed, and registration was not required.

The first terminals operated from 1973 to 1974 at Leopold's Records, a communal house, and Whole Earth Access Store in Berkeley; Vocations for Social Change in Oakland; and the San Francisco Public Library's Mission branch. Although it was popular, the group temporarily shut down the project because they could not easily replicate the equipment and languages being used, and the computer that acted as the central hub in the network was not sufficient to support expansion of the project.

The three men regrouped and in 1977 created a collectively run nonprofit entity called the Community Memory Project to support CM (this group was interchangeably referred to as the Community Memory Project and Community Memory). They developed their own software, a database called Sequitur, and a communications package called X.dot, and began placing terminals with the overhauled system throughout Berkeley. That pilot program ran from 1984 to 1988, after which they made adjustments based on research and evaluations, then released new terminals in 1989 in Berkeley and licensed their software for similar systems to be set up in places like San Francisco State University and Los Angeles' Electronic Cafe. Due to a shortage of funding and inconsistent marketing and outreach, Community Memory shutdown in 1992.

Level of description

Folder

Date

1964-2000 (Made), 1974-1991 (Bulk)

Publisher

Computer History Museum (Publisher)

Extent

32.59 linear feet in 21 record cartons, 3 manuscript boxes, and 5 custom boxes of varying sizes

Subject

Computer Networks

Collection title

Community Memory records

Credit

Gift of Lee Felsenstein

Catalogue number

102733953

Lot number

X3090.2005