News Video about the Internet from 1981

[grnidone]

"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/

[bill]

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... 

[Drastic]

Aww yeah, the Hayes 300 was the shizzle!

[littleman]

Lots of irony there in hindsight re the internet and newspapers.

[ergophobe]

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...