In the fast-moving computer industry, it sometimes just takes a year for a guy to achieve veteran status. When a guy has stayed in the field for nine years, weathering the various changes in technology and learning new tricks of the trade almost every day, he might even be described as a techno-immortal.
For the generation of Nashvillians who cut their teeth on modems and DOS 3.3, Ben Cunningham—a tousle-haired real estate developer whose personal style tends toward tennis shoes—is a legendary figure. Cunningham, however, would rather not have it that way. He’d prefer to be just another member of the community.
Some years ago, Cunningham bought his first computer—an IBM PC—to use in his real estate business. Years earlier, he had been accepted to the doctoral program in computer science at Georgia Tech, but he had turned down the offer. Real estate, he decided, seemed profitable enough. Besides, he enjoyed the real estate business—especially helping clients design their spaces—and he figured that the PC would come in handy on the job.
“I bought a program called AutoCAD—a design program—to help me create something that would show people how their space would look after build-out,” Cunningham says.
By the standards of the day, AutoCAD was a large and complex program, and people around the country were beginning to develop other programs to make it more useful. In searching for these user-friendly programs, Cunningham altered the course of his own life.
“I had heard that if you had a modem, you could find more files for AutoCAD,” Cunningham explains. “Not long after I bought the PC, I also bought a modem. It ran at 1,200 baud and cost $600.” (Today, modems nearly eight times as fast cost less than a third of that price.)
In short order, Cunningham began to explore the then-tiny world of “bulletin board systems,” or BBSs, which functioned like the real-world corkboards. They served as places where people could post and read notices and files.
“I was hooked from the instant I began calling BBSs. For a long time, it felt like on the other end was a whole virtual community, not just a [computer] box. It felt like a whole family.”
Almost immediately, Cunningham knew that he wanted to be a part of that family.
A few months later, he heard about a piece of software used to run a bulletin board system called “TBBS.” Unlike other BBSs of the past, this new one allowed the owner to attach one computer to multiple modems, all of which could use the service at the same time. The discovery was groundbreaking. Immediately, Cunningham knew what he wanted to do.
“I wanted to be a SysOp [system operator],” he says. “So I put down the money for the software and six modems and phone lines.”
He also decided to take a departure from the norm. Before that time, BBS operators had been hobbyists who, in essence, lent their computers to the public. They allowed anyone to dial in, free of charge, and to use whatever services they wanted. Ben Cunningham had a different idea: He wanted to charge money for the use of his BBS.
In 1987, the Nashville Exchange—Ben Cunningham’s ticket to online immortality—went online, becoming the first commercial multi-line BBS in town. The reaction was almost instantaneous.
“Operators of free BBSs were resentful at first,” Cunningham admits. “At the time, there was a sense that if you charged for the use of your BBS, that somehow you were breaking an unwritten rule, destroying the sense of community.”
Still, Cunningham forged ahead, and a large clientele went with him. In the first year, because of continual demand, the Nashville Exchange added six more lines. In three years the Exchange was offering a total of 18 lines.
“I didn’t go into this expecting to make money,” Cunningham says. “I didn’t go into it with the expectation of a lot of growth. There was a time when I even considered the investment to be too much trouble and considered getting out. But something in my mind told me not to do it.”
Nine years later, sitting at his desk, Cunningham reflects proudly on the growth of his Nashville Exchange. Four years ago, he says, users of his BBS could already send Internet e-mail. The Exchange, he says, has always been on the cutting edge. “We’ve always tried to push the envelope as far as hardware and software goes,” Cunningham says. “We were able to offer Internet services to subscribers two years ago—before even some of the local Internet providers.”
The service handles more than 3,000 calls per day and is waiting for the phone company to give the go-ahead for more phone lines. There are 68 lines now.
Pushing relentlessly on into the future, Cunningham has big plans for the Exchange. He’s moving away from the BBS and toward the Internet, where he believes the future of communication is headed.
“I don’t really know where the Exchange is going in the future. It scares me to predict such a dynamic industry. But we’re going to go whichever way the flow takes us.”
Next year marks the Nashville Exchange’s 10th anniversary, and there’s bound to be a lot of birthday cake and a lot of talk about the future. There will probably be a discussion about the Internet and how it will grow in years to come. And, surely, everyone will have different answers.
But there’s one question any person in attendance could ask and never answer: What’s next for Ben Cunningham, the techno-immortal who, after 10 years, has been leading the pack for so long?
You can only call a man a “veteran” for so long.
