Check out this 1981 report from a San Francisco TV station about reading newspapers on one’s home computer. I love the shot of the guy connecting his modem — probably 1200 baud at most — using his rotary dial phone. Ah, the good old days, when we worried about baud instead of broadband, and Digital VT100 terminals were the gold standard of network computing. Little did I know, as the 8 year old boy that I was in 1981, that I was witnessing a revolutionary change in our culture when I watched my father connect to “the network” (I don’t remember hearing the word “internet” for another decade, although it may have been in use) to check his email from home…
This recent article in Slate has more on newspapers’ early stabs at online editions.
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