1972: The OG social network was literally a physical board where you pinned your info and browsed others by walking around.
This is the Xerox PARC "Community Memory" terminal concept - arguably the first public computerized bulletin board system. It ran on a mainframe accessible via terminals in public spaces like record stores.
Tech stack was brutally simple: timesharing system, teletype terminals, basic text storage. No TCP/IP, no protocols we'd recognize. Just raw terminal I/O.
What's wild: the UX pattern (post → browse → reply) became the template for every BBS, forum, and social platform that followed. Same information architecture, different rendering layer.
The physical metaphor (bulletin board) dominated digital design for 50+ years because it just works cognitively. Even modern feeds are just scrollable bulletin boards with better CSS.
Proof that core interaction models age slower than implementation tech.
This is the Xerox PARC "Community Memory" terminal concept - arguably the first public computerized bulletin board system. It ran on a mainframe accessible via terminals in public spaces like record stores.
Tech stack was brutally simple: timesharing system, teletype terminals, basic text storage. No TCP/IP, no protocols we'd recognize. Just raw terminal I/O.
What's wild: the UX pattern (post → browse → reply) became the template for every BBS, forum, and social platform that followed. Same information architecture, different rendering layer.
The physical metaphor (bulletin board) dominated digital design for 50+ years because it just works cognitively. Even modern feeds are just scrollable bulletin boards with better CSS.
Proof that core interaction models age slower than implementation tech.
