Why Didn't the Internet Take Off In 1983? 469
jfruh writes "An amazing pair of videos from the AT&T archives tout a service called Viewtron that brought much of what we expect from the modern Internet to customers' homes in 1983. Online news, banking services, restaurant reviews, shopping, e-mail — all were available on your TV set, controlled by a wireless infrared keyboard. The system had 15,000 customers in cities on the U.S. east coast, but was shut down after $50 million was spent on it. But why did it flop? Was the world just not ready for it?"
No Porn! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ready? (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't see it so I'm asking... was it a walled garden with adverts?
It was the 80's, everyone was too busy with hairspray, good music and doing coke to care about the internet.
Plus at 28.8K it was faster to go to the shop to get porn.
Re:People continue to underestimate the Internet (Score:5, Funny)
In the eighties we were on Compuserve. I paid around 1.5$ per hour phone charges to connect.
We had offline readers that quickly downloaded stuff we previously determined and hang up.
People charged by the minute do this even nowadays with the web. No biggie.
We bought Blue-Jeans, Coffee, Books and other stuff there as well just like now.
OTOH the multi-player online games were text-only.
And now get off my lawn.