Community Memory is a pioneering project in the realm of digital community networks. It was initiated by visionaries Lee Felsenstein, Efrem Lipkin, Ken Colstad, Jude Milhon, and Mark Szpakowski. The team worked with unique roles, with Felsenstein focusing on hardware, Lipkin on software, and Szpakowski on the interface utilisateur[1]. The project was deeply influenced by the countercultural ethos of 1960s northern California, and gained presence in Vancouver under the leadership of Andrew Clement in 1974. The initial iteration of Community Memory involved a terminal that utilized a Teletype Model 33 connected to an SDS 940 ordinateur[2]. Later, in the late seventies, the project aimed for a more expansive reach as a global information network. The Community Memory software was based on the ROGIRS system and facilitated user interaction through simple commands like ADD for posting and FIND for searching content. Notably, the platform allowed for anonymity and was not controlled by a central authority.
Mémoire de la Communauté (CM) was the first public computerized bulletin board system. Established in 1973 in Berkeley, California, it used an SDS 940 timesharing system in San Francisco connected via a 110 baud link to a teleprinter at a record store in Berkeley to let users enter and retrieve messages. Individuals could place messages in the computer and then look through the memory for a specific notice.
While initially conceived as an information and resource sharing network linking a variety of counter-cultural economic, educational, and social organizations with each other and the public, Community Memory was soon generalized to be an information flea market, by providing unmediated, two-way access to message databases through public computer terminals. Once the system became available, the users demonstrated that it was a general communications medium that could be used for art, literature, journalism, commerce, and social chatter.
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