A list of some of Usenet's biggest binary groups. With 1317+ days retention, the (binary) Usenet storage (which binsearch.info indexes) is more than 9 petabytes. CC A-SA 3.0 / FlippyFlink. Some rights reserved. In 1980, two American programmers attempted to link computers in two neighbouring universities and almost accidentally invented Usenet, a system of group mailouts that was the prototype of today’s social networks.
The programmers’ idea was to share software with one another and keep in touch at the same time. They couldn’t have imagined that a few years later, thousands of people working at universities in the USA and across the world would connect to the Usenet, calling it “the soul of the Internet” and “the place where important things happen”.
For the next 15 years, the system was to remain a platform for serious international discussion, a tool for self-organisation and even a basis for building political utopias. “What was once impossible, is now possible... Usenet is conducted publicly, and is mostly uncensored. This means that everyone can both contribute and gain from everyone else’s opinion”, wrote Michael Houben, an early enthusiast and first historian of the internet community.
