"Imagine sitting down with your morning cup of coffee to read the newspaper on your home computer...
It takes a little over 2 hours to download the entire paper over the phone, and with usage charges at $5 an hour, the 20 cent street edition won't have much competition"
RC: did you have one of those phone reader things where you put the handset into the little foam circular things?
http://www.wimp.com/theinternet/
Those old modems really sucked. My mom would always pick up and start dialing before listening to whether I had a connection. The rotary dial sound would usually kill my connection and I'd have to dial up again.
I was very glad to get rid of the old foam cup modem that cradled the receiver when the Hayes 300 baud Smartmodem came out. Those were the days... 8)
Aww yeah, the Hayes 300 was the shizzle!
Lots of irony there in hindsight re the internet and newspapers.
Well, that's like when my brother told me about digital cameras. I said that a few kilopixels, nobody would ever use them and resolution would have to get a lot higher. He disagreed and said before long, everyone would use them because people don't really care about resolution. We were both wrong/right.
I was right - resolution need to get much higher, but it happened very fast
He was right - it didn't take long to render the film camera obsolete for most casual users, but it was because resolution got better.
I think the comment about the newspaper was similar. It was right in the context and for 25 years, that was the right answer. But then broadband became common and...