Season 1, Episode 2
Ancient Technopagans
Magicians, Witches, and Neopagans of the Early Internet.
October 31st, 2023
It’s the late 1980s. With a computer, modem, and phone line, you hear the crackle of a modem as you log into PODSnet – the Pagan and Occult Distribution System network. It’s an early BBS, or Bulletin Board System, and for the first time, you can communicate with like-minded individuals all over the country within hours. This ancient digitech was asynchronous and expensive, but it was the ancestor of today’s social media.
FEATURING
Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia
Kevin Driscoll is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. His recent research involves alternative histories of the global internet, the politics of amateur telecommunications, and the moral economy of consumer software. In collaboration with Julien Mailland, he published Minitel: Welcome to the Internet (MIT Press, 2017) and maintains the Minitel Research Lab, USA. His latest book, The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media (Yale University Press, 2022) tells a new origin story for social media through the dial-up bulletin board systems of the 1980s and 1990s.
Professor and Head of Religious Studies at UNCG, and Director of the Network for the Cultural Study of Videogaming
Gregory Price Grieve is Head and Professor in the Religious Studies Department at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He also serves as the Director of UNCG’s Network for the Cultural Study of Videogaming. Grieve’s intellectual pursuits are centered on qualitative research in the realm of digital religion, with a specific focus on the intricate dynamics of video games. He is the author and editor of five books. He also has over two decades of leadership experience in academia, administration, and higher education and has received the UNC Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Practitioner and author of Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (2002)
Richard Kaczynski is a past SysOp of The Magic Bus BBS in Royal Oak, MI. He has been a scholar in the field of Western esotericism for thirty-five years and has lectured internationally, including as a keynote speaker for the first Trans- States conference at the University of Northampton in 2016. He has also appeared in several documentaries, and written numerous books, chapters, and articles. His books include Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley, The Weiser Concise Guide to Aleister Crowley, and Forgotten Templars: The Untold Origins of Ordo Templi Orientis, among others. By day, he works as a statistician affiliated with Yale University, the University of Detroit Mercy, and the VA.
Ashleigh McSidhe
Practitioner, SysOp of SidheMail BBS, and former BBS user.
Nisaba Merriweather
Practitioner and former BBS SysOp.
Zelda
Practitioner.
CREDITS
Host: Heather Freeman; Producer: Amber Walker; Editor: Lucy Perkins; Associate Producer: Noor Gill; Sound Design: Jennie Cataldo; Fact Checker: Dania Suleman; Executive Producer for PRX Productions: Jocelyn Gonzales; Music: APM Music and Epidemic Sound; The Project Managers: Edwin Ochoa and Morgan Church; Advisors: Chas Clifton, Daniel Harms, and Meg Whalen; Guests: Kevin Driscoll, Gregory Grieve, Richard Kaczynski, Ashleigh McSidhe, Nisaba Merriweather, and Zelda. Additional interviews with Professor Douglas Cowan, and numerous practitioners who shared their BBS stories; Funding and Support: The National Endowment for the Humanities and The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
TRANSCRIPT
LEARN MORE
Cowan, D. E. (2005). Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet. Routledge.
Driscoll, K. (2022). The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media. Yale University Press.
Mailland, J., & Driscoll, K. (2017). Minitel: Welcome to the Internet. MIT Press. (also website)