Printing the network: AIDS activism and online access in the 1980s

Abstract

The first issue of The Critical Path AIDS Project Newsletter, launched in 1989, ends with a small SILENCE = DEATH graphic made famous by Gran Fury and ACT UP (Critical Path AIDS Project 1989a, 27). The tiny icon appears at the end of a long 'Directory of PWA Services', and takes up just an inch on the printed page. It could easily be missed by a reader casually flipping through these listings. The graphic, ubiquitous within late 1980s HIV/AIDS-activist circles and contemporary memorialization projects, takes on a different valence here: this SILENCE = DEATH describes Critical Path's work to connect "PWAs" (people living with AIDS) with treatment information using computer network technologies. 1 Silence marked the consequences of exclusion from new online communication infrastructures, used by treatment activists to create and share up-to-theminute, collaborative health information. Silence, in this case, might mean never hearing a modem's dial tone.To break this silence, Critical Path set out to 'provide up-to-the-minute computernetworked information on support groups, organizational schedules, experimental AIDS medications and protocols, alternative therapies, the best of the AIDS computer bulletin board items, [and] direct services available to PWAs' (Kuromiya 1989, 2). Critical Path provided focused outreach to 'women, IV drug-using communities, and to PWAs of color, the physically challenged, the imprisoned, and the homeless' (Ibid). The organization was one of many HIV/AIDS activist groups that worked online over the course of the 1980s, gathering, synthesizing, and most importantly printing vital information that was otherwise unavailable through mainstream media and public-health agencies. Critical Path's online work presents a significant yet marginal internet history, and another way 1980s activism set the stage for HIV/AIDS's entry into wider publichealth dialogs in the 1990s (Brier 2009;Patton 1996).Kiyoshi Kuromiya (1943Kuromiya ( -2000 founded the Philadelphia-based Critical Path Project and edited its newsletter. The first issue was a 28-page long, desktop published, letter-sized, black-and-white document. Heavy with text, each issue included about a dozen articles, most of which were researched and written by Kuromiya, though generally unattributed. These articles were supplemented by listings for support groups, a phone directory and events calendar for PWA services in the tri-state area, and classified ads from supportive businesses and services. Kuromiya wanted to offer wider access to the text-based online Bulletin Board Systems (or 'BBS') he began using in the mid-1980s. To do this, he republished BBS information for those without computer access using two widely accessible and familiar formats: the newsletter, and a telephone hotline he operated out of his home.A reader consulting the masthead of Critical Path's first issue encountered a contributor list made up of many curious acronyms: AIDS Info BBS, AIDS Info Exchange BBS, AIDS FORUM, and HRCF BSS. These 'authors' represented geographic...

Bugs: Rethinking the History of Computing

“…The overlap of AIDS and computing does not end with the network metaphors used to explain personal responsibility and the viral prophylaxes that were emergent in computing cultures in the early 1990s. This period also includes a rich and under-explored history of computing by AIDS activists, who imagined how networked computing might support survival for people with HIV and responded with expertise to the prevalence of fear and panic surrounding new computing practices (McKinney, 2018).…”