Before the internet, way before smartphones, way before our devices were connected 24/7, before all that, computers did already communicate with each others. You had to dial-up to a server. Since the http protocol (invented 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee) hasn’t been invented yet, those servers ran their own software. This was called a BBS or a Bulletin Board. You were able to post either publicly, or privately (mails) and reply. There were also sections that allowed you to upload/download files (nowadays we’d call that a file share).
A BBS server often had just a few connections available at same time, which means that you’d sometimes had to keep on dialing in. Once connected, you proactively had to go read your mails, there were no notifications. If you were connected to a BBS that belonged to a network, this BBS would then synchronize with other servers during night, relaying your message to people at the other side of the globe. That could take several days but was still faster than a letter sent by post. The internet adopted those features, called it email and newsgroups. The latter arrived from the USENET, the “user’s network”, developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy dial-up network architecture.
Here’s what the “internet” looked like in the 80’s
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