Ward Christensen (along with Randy Suess) is the inventor of BBS. Bulletin Board System (or BBS) is what many of us used to communicate, upload, download, and share stuff with each other. Many traditional BBS servers moved to the Internet in early 2000s and that was when many of us started to know it.

Personally, my life would have been a lot different if it wasn’t for BBSes. I used to play games on them, used to communicate with a lot of people using message boards, and learned a lot about computers. I was fascinated about them and I still am.

Even though I’m much younger than many other people who used to use them, I still remember using dial-up late at night (when my parents went to sleep) to check boards. Ars Technica calls Ward the architect of our online age, and he is indeed. Many of us are owed our IT careers to him, many of us know what we know about Internet and computers because of him.

And remember I got to know BBSes a lot later than many other people, I used BBS a lot less than many other people and I haven’t experienced what many other people have yet it’s one of the best experiences I have regarding to computers and some of my best memories involve these boards.

I’m pretty sure some older people have a lot of amazing stories regarding BBSes and I would be so happy to hear them.

Unfortunately Ward passed away few days ago on 2024 October 11. May he rest in peace. Thank you for everything sir.