1994: 'Today Show'­'What Is the Internet, Anyway?'

1994: 'Today Show'­'What Is the Internet, Anyway?'
Posted by Stephan Kinsella on June 11, 2011 06:27 AM

This is an amazing flashback to 1994 -- Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel, on the Today Show, mystified by what this new-fangled "Internet" is, what the @ symbol means, what email is....

Of course, such a video could be used to mock the ineptness and tech illiteracy of modern TV talking heads, but I remember myself being a bit confused by it in the early 90s. Email came first, if I recall -- I know I had it at my first law firm in 1992, but I think I went to a public demonstration of the world-wide web and a "browser" at Villanova law school in Philadelphia in 1994 or 1995. I had never seen a browser or the web before. I think this clip is a better illustration of how amazingly recent the amazing Internet is. This is just 17 years ago. Incredible how much societal change we've seen because of the explosive growth and adoption of the Internet. It's quickly become a crucial part of society -- and a critical means of fighting the state.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI&feature=player_embedded


re: 'Today Show'­'What Is the Internet, Anyway?'
Posted by David Kramer on June 11, 2011 08:58 AM

Stephan, I'd like to add to your step back in time vis-à-vis the internet with an article published in Newsweek back in 1995 called, "Why the Internet Will Fail." (I'm not going to print a single word from this article. I don't want to spoil any of the fun for the reader.)

[Thanks to Chris Petersen]

re: re: 'Today Show'­'What Is the Internet, Anyway?'
Posted by Stephan Kinsella on June 11, 2011 09:30 AM

Kramer­oh, that piece ( The Internet? Bah!: Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana) is great. But I can't resist spoiling it:

"...no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."

Ha! Well, okay, one out of three ain't bad. But even the last is a bit wrong in that government has much to fear from the exposure and communication afforded by the Internet and related technologies, just as cockroaches scurry to the shadows from the kitchen floor when you turn a light on at midnight.

And this: "Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data" -- no offense, Wikipedia!

The Media and the Internet
Posted by Butler Shaffer on June 11, 2011 11:24 AM

What is most telling about the mainstream media's early response to the Internet is not its failure to predict where it would be in 2011, but its failure -- as in so many other areas -- to ask significant questions. That so much attention was given over to asking about the meaning of "@," instead of making inquiries into the possible social and political implications of this new system, is instructive of the point made by Thomas Pynchon: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." This was not unlike the kind of questioning Gutenberg might have faced ("But what will the letters look like?")

These 1990s media people ­ whose employers faced the biggest threat from the Internet ­ might have invoked L. Frank Baum's directive: "Pay no attention to those men behind their screens."
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