Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A look back at the Internet stone age.

My oh my, how times change. Thanks to Shawn Elliott for the link to this, one of the early news reports describing the newfangled Internet. Let's all LOL together at the prescient narration and sadly ironic commentary like, "that won't be much competition for the $.20 street edition." DOH!!!

31 comments:

Ian Jacobson said...

I hear UC Berkley is offering a class in starcraft.


http://michaelo.phswebs.com/BerkeleyStarcraft/syllabus.html

dyreschlock said...

Perhaps this is where the death of print began.

trip1ex said...

I thought Neanderthals were extinct. Who were those people?

Anonymous said...

What a time to be alive!

Stephen said...

The "internet"? That's still around?

Unfortunately in order to play the video clip I need a firmware update for my neural implant.

G-Man said...

What manner of rotating voice-based device was that?! Such ancient technology is baffling to me.

Allan said...

I'm gonna make a movie where they play this clip at the beginning and fades after the female journalist goes "that won't be much competition for the $.20 street edition," then cuts to a dude walking around an abandoned and defunct newspaper company. Kind of like I Am Legend. I'd have to learn how to CG-render newspapers, though.

tomsamson said...

Haha, awesome, i love videos like this :)
The one guy is subtitled "Owns Home Computer", wicked :D
Man, have we come far on some ends :)
Sad, i can´t find that other video i watched recently, its a bit newer, shows the first public presentation of the CD at a conference, they brought piles of books to illustrate how much can fit onto a CD because otherwise people didn´t get just how much volume it has, quite cool, too :)

Anonymous said...

I can't decide if this is hilarious or tragic! Maybe both, like a clown. No... clowns aren't hilarious.

On a serious note, it's gonna be strange with the Detroit papers online most days, but I hardly read them now anyway. So much of our content is outsourced it hardly matters. A guy from Florida does our film reviews, which I find annoying. If a reviewer lives in town, there's some accountability. An outsourced reprint though, there's not, really. I don't know why it matters, it just does.

frags said...

Not much competition for the print indutry? LOL

SPOD said...

This just makes me sad... Mankind marches forward into regression through technology... Siiigh.

Ken in Irvine said...

You figure with a 20 year head-start they might have figured out a way to stay in business.

Lou Chou said...

That idea will never take off...

Jailem said...

'With the exception of pictures, ads, and comics.' Well now there's your problem.
Great that this is the science editors story.

Christopher Jon said...

"We're not in it to make money." And that was the first mistake made in the road of the end of the Newspaper.

houston3000 said...

$5 an hour (back in 1981) to access the newspaper sans images/comics/ads online. That blows my mind.

Anderson said...

I love how they tag that guy in the middle of the vid:

Richard Halloran
Owns Home Computer

Think about that! That was his defining characteristic! Not so tough now, are you Richard?

Anonymous said...

Now, a world of information at your fingertips. Now. NOW!!

Okay, 5 minutes from now since modems were like 300 baud back then.

And now presently, today's current world of up-to-the-minute contemporary immediacy now. Now.

Joe Rybicki said...

Gawd that's great. That would have been right around the time I first signed up for the Cleveland Freenet.

The funny thing is how little things changed between 1981 and the mid-'90s...and how much they've changed since then. Boggles the mind.

Unknown said...

"Of the two to three thousand people who own a personal computer in the San Fransisco Bay Area...."

And yet, people in 2009 are still surprised that print media is essentially dead as an economically viable business.

Anonymous said...

Oh wow! I love retro bits like that.
Were the modems cited in the article Hayes Compatible? I need to know if 300 baud is enough to get the damned articles too.

John Rivett said...

Acoustic couplers, red ass dial phones, TRS-80's, Dummy terminals.. Life was...Simpler then..The air smelled sweet, children laughed more..The milkman brought the cheese on time..Ohh to be young again..

But luckily we can look back and laugh at the silly notion that some form of electronic networking will damage our beloved newspaper industry, why that's just nonsense! Oh..Wait...

Raffa said...

I love the dudes modem ^_^

Anonymous said...

Bah - the old days have returned Jeff! The now (thanks to no more competition) best-selling Gaming Magazine in the US launches this February. I'm taking pre-orders on issue 001 now! http://worlddominationplan.com/

MSUSteve said...

You can't really blame the newscaster and reporter for saying that system was unlikely to threaten the 20 cent daily. It took TWO HOURS to download and cost $5.00 an hour for usage. So the electronic paper with no pictures costs at least $10 and took two hours to procure. I'd go with the 20 cent daily too.

Stryker Profile said...

Egon was right. Print is dead.

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