The first public online community was created in Leopold’s Records, in Berkeley, California, in 1973, eleven years before I was born. The project was called Community Memory and it was a digital bulletin board, twenty years before Craigslist, hosted on a computer terminal inside the record store. Additional terminals were installed in laundromats and libraries. Its creators called it “an information flea market,” where users could post messages seeking a drummer for their band or a chess partner, or recommend restaurants or books to read. If you weren’t a scientist or an academic, posting to (or reading) Community Memory was likely your first experience using a computer.
