Perhaps it would be accurate to say that Arpanet provided the vision and ultimately protocols to create one unified network, while the online communities (BBS s

Perhaps it would be accurate to say that Arpanet provided the vision and ultimately protocols to create one unified network, while the online communities (BBS seems the wrong term to me) created many of the _applications_ (in concept, no code survived) that would eventually run on that unified network. Even that's not really true because NNTP was a strictly Internet thing and SMTP email existed before most online communities did. Heck you may as well throw in Prestel and Minitel while you're at it. Honestly the online communities seem like the Dodo of the modern internet, not the Coelacanth. For example I was able to get through those decades without using any of them (save for a little bit of CIS required because something...something...Microsoft developer...something needed it).