[ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square

[Ofer Inbar]

Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net> wrote:
> I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was 
> the PC-connected printer.
> 
> But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too.  I do think I 
> remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion 
> now about how they passed data around.  Disks?  BBSs?

Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the
Chinese dissidents saw it at the time.  If you're interested in
spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University
and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference
held there in the fall of 1989.  One of the student leaders of
the protest managed to get out of the country because he had already
been approved for a visa to study at Brandeis, and he organized this
conference shortly after he got to the US.  IIRC it was a big magnet
event for anyone involved who'd managed to get out of China, and
there were likely panels and presentations on the topic of what
technology they used or how they communicated, among other things.

BTW, Brandeis University didn't even have Internet at the time.
The first Internet connection came in January 1990, shortly after.
In the fall of 1989 Brandeis was on CSnet and BITNET.
  -- Cos