Interesting Snippets

I had been tracking the “videotext” experiments that big publishers along with broadcasters like Knight-Ridder and Warner were experimenting with: a soon-to-come way of delivering customized information to people in their homes by using telephones as input devices and televisions as output devices. The whole system was centrally controlled, with users punching buttons on their telephone keypads in order to navigate through menus of preprepared information. Billions of dollars were spent on videotext experiments, but none of them included ways for the medium’s users to communicate with—much less create content for—each other