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In Ireland, an Amiga owner is answering a technical query posted by another Amiga user in America a couple of hours ago. In various places around the world, a group of Amiga owners are talking about a new graphics card that one of them has bought. They are talking in real time, despite the fact that they are many thousand of miles apart.
In Germany, somebody laughs out loud at the latest proposal on how to destroy the world that somebody has posted to a Usenet Newsgroup. In Bath, the editor of an Amiga magazine reads the comments of some of his readers in a Fidonet Echo and replies to them.
Does this sound like some weird science fiction novel? Something dreamed up by a crazy Californian visionary? Well, it may sound unreal, but all of these examples are true. Every one of the people mentioned is a traveller on the information superhighway.
There has been, in recent months, an unprecedented amount of hype about how Comms and the Internet in particular is going to change our lives. TV programs have talked about how it could revolutionise the way we communicate with each other, with information on an immense number of subjects available at the touch of a button. So what will this actually mean to you? As an Amiga user, you are already on the cutting edge of technology. In fact, Amiga owners have been one of the first groups to get seriously into the Comms revolution. All around the world, thousands of Amiga owners are communicating over vast distances and exchanging information and programs. This is the first part of the Comms revolution - E-mail.
Imagine writing a letter without paper. That's what E-mail is about. Instead of printing it out, sticking it in an envelope and nipping down to the post office, you type in your message, call up a local BBS or E-mail server and your message is sent winging its way across the globe.
Although there is no paper involved, it works in a similar way to a normal letter. At the start of the message is an address, and the computers use this to work out where to send the letter. For instance, to send messages to this magazine on the Internet, you would use the E-mail address amformat@futurenet.co.uk. This address identifies who the message is going to, and any computer on the Internet can look at this address and work out where to send the message. It's exactly the same as writing Amiga Format, 30 Monmouth St, Bath, Avon on the front of an envelope.
When you call a BBS or set up an Internet account, you are given your own address, and anybody can use this to send a message to you. But having an E-mail address is no use if you can't talk to a group of people at once. This is where the second part of Comms comes in: conferences. On every type of E-mail service, there are a series of conferences (called Newsgroups on the Internet or echoes on Fidonet) on an absolutely huge range of subjects.
And these subjects aren't limited to computers - most services carry conferences on everything from astronomy to zoology. If you write a message in one of the conferences, it is then spread to all of the other systems which participate.
So, if you have a programming query, you could put a message in one of the programming conferences, and within a few days people all over the world could potentially be reading your thoughts and opinions. They could then send helpful (or unhelpful) replies by the same route, which would eventually find their way back to you. However, everybody else who reads that conference could also read the message and the reply, so you could be helping any number of people if it's a common problem.
These conferences are more than just problem-solving forums. Many are based around discussions on issues of the day, so you could easily find yourself discussing why it's a bad idea to put VAT on fuel bills with a group of people that you have never met and are never likely to meet.
The third thing which could make you a certified Comms freak is files. Imagine having the entire contents of all the world's PD libraries only a phone call away. Instead of having to call a PD company and wait several days for the disks to arrive, you could have the latest PD and Shareware programs on your Amiga in a few minutes.
All you need to do is to call up your local BBS or Internet site, tell it which file you want and it is transferred on to your machine. Not only this, but many PD authors upload their stuff themselves, so you can always get hold of the latest version of a program. This is especially important if you want to keep up to date in the never-ending war against viruses, because you can always get hold of the latest virus checker.
But it's not just a question of getting hold of PD programs. Many universities and other educational establishments are also on line, so you can raid their archives for books, clip art or any number of other things. There are also a number of tools which enable you to search for files by specific key words, so you don't have to wade through epic lists of filenames. It's like having several gigabytes worth of disk space on your machine.
Have I convinced you yet? Well, it seems that many people have already been convinced, because somewhere in the region of 18 million people now have access to the Internet, and many thousands of people regularly call BBS. Can you afford to be left behind?
If you are a newcomer to Comms, one of the first things you need to do is find a local Bulletin Board System (BBS) to call. There are several hundred BBS around the country, and many of these are run on Amigas or have sections dedicated to Amiga users.
Most Bulletin Boards are run by people in their spare time, although they are far from being amateur affairs. The people who run them (who are referred to as System Operators or Sysops) are invariably very dedicated people who give up large amounts of their own time to provide a service for others. At the risk of sounding moralistic, this is a fact well worth remembering when you call a BBS.
Most BBS are computers linked to a single phone line. Many have phone lines dedicated to the BBS, but some share the telephone with other occupants of the house, so don't forget to check if the BBS only runs at certain times before you dial, because there are few thing more irritating in life than having a modem squealing at you when you've just got out of bed to answer the phone.
Although we don't have the space for a comprehensive list of BBS telephone numbers, here are a few which you may find useful. All of these run 24 hour services. If you can't find one in your local area, most of these also enable you to search through a list of BBS by dialling code, so you should be able to find one which is only a local call away.
Metnet Triangle
01482 473781/01482 442251
One of the most colourful Bulletin Boards in the country, Metnet is also one of the best. And it just so happens that it's also the official Amiga Format BBS, so you can send us all your messages, letters and questions on it.
Aspects
0161 792 0260
A very well respected Bulletin Board which caters for all types of machines. Aspects carries a particularly wide and diverse range of echoes on many subjects and is thoroughly recommended.
01 for Amiga
0171 377 1358
One of the oldest-established BBS in the country, this Amiga-only BBS has a vast amount of software on-line and an immense range of echoes.
