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I write about growing up through the PC and Internet revolution in rural America here: https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10417-the-pc-internet-revolution-in-rural-america I talk about the difficulties of everything being long distance, #BBS, #UUCP, #PPP, escaping #Microsoft, #DOS, #Linux, #OS2, and Theo de Raadt. Thank you @kensanata and @szczezuja for prompting me to do this. I realize I may have written, uh, SLIGHTLY more than you were looking for 
@jgoerzen This isn't exactly my path, but it's close enough that we would have seen each other through the underbrush, and maybe shared the trail here and there.
I've been meaning to document some of those experiences, as well. Perhaps this will kick me to get started.
@elb I'd enjoy reading it if you write it. Please tag me if you remember to make sure I don't miss it!
@jgoerzen I fired up early-computing.org and blatted an outline into it an hour or so ago. Hopefully I get time to polish off parts of it. I don't know if I have the energy to do an omnibus like you did. :-)
@elb I may have been... excessive. I'll enjoy whatever you have. What's early-computing.org?
@jgoerzen Oh, sorry, that's ambiguous.
I opened an org-mode file named early-computing.org. It's not a domain. Although now I kind of want it to be, and it's available...
@elb Ahh, org-mode files do mess with my head in that way sometimes too, yes But yes, that would be a great domain...
@jgoerzen I kind of feel like I don't have enough expertise on really EARLY computing to do it myself.
@elb Same here. There was a lot before the PCs of the 80s, and I mean I was 5 when RMS was starting on the GNU stuff. On the other hand, 1985 is closer to the beginning of modernish computing in the 1960s than it is to today, and the difference will become even smaller compared to the present as time goes on.
@jgoerzen I've also pointedly walked my way back to the early or mid 70s, although my personal history didn't start until the mid 80s. So maybe.
@elb Similar here. For me, I've sometimes seen Linux as sort of a unification of two trees: the PCs, and the institutional big iron. I never had any exposure to the latter before the unification was already happening, and so I've been interested in the VAXes, PDPs, etc. -- the Unixy big iron of the 70s and 80s. @eludom's Compuserve stories are particularly interesting, as I was a user of that and he worked there - and it ran on the PDP series.
@jgoerzen @elb same with me.. I probably had less money, so never got my own phone line, or ran my own BBS, or called any long distance BBS's, let alone compuserve. Worked in a tobacco field in 4th grade to make money to buy my first computer.
.. but I learned logo in school in 5th grade, and in high school there were a couple of computers with modems. And there was a vibrant local BBS scene with dozens available.
I jumped from using a BBS's email gateway to access file-by-email services (dunno if it was UUCP) and Wired's email bot that let me read some of their articles -- to a dorm room with an ethernet jack. Only then came unix.
I also had my back-to-dialup phase (far too long!). Now starlink hits 200 mbit sometimes.
@joeyh @elb I don't want to make it sound like we had lots of money... my parents scrimped quite a bit, but did what they could to invest in my interests (for which I'm grateful!) Would have loved to have that vibrant local BBS scene!
Ironically, I've been on Starlink's waitlist since they started it and just got an email from them last week saying it'll be another year because they're "at capacity in my area". Strange, they've never offered it in my area.