Information Superhighway? That sounds like Super hype to me!

November 17, 2014 8:41 PM

Andy Baio has created a YouTube channel of early internet informational videos: The VHS-Era Internet (1984-1995)
posted by The Whelk (15 comments total)

I recommend two documentaries by Robert Cringely: "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires" (1996) and "Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet" (1998). Unknown whether available online.
posted by neuron at 8:48 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh this is great: Bill Gates, Future Vision: A Microsoft Plus Program from 1994.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:54 PM on November 17, 2014

I am learning so much.
posted by mazola at 9:13 PM on November 17, 2014

I think you meant to say MeFi's own Andy Baio.
posted by chrisamiller at 9:23 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

rad.
posted by azarbayejani at 9:24 PM on November 17, 2014

Seeing what the past thought of our present has been and will forever be fascinating.
posted by josephtate at 9:34 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

the MeTV segment has a lot of business on QVC and it really seems like an important bridge from catalog shopping to online shopping, which despite being seen as tacky and suburbian, actually hits all those things online marketers crow about (interactive! customer-oriented! Niche designers!)
posted by The Whelk at 10:22 PM on November 17, 2014

Also, how much all the ideas are there but the infrastructure isn't...and the collusion of telecom and media companies to make it happen. Interesting to think how all of it was all planned out.
posted by The Whelk at 10:26 PM on November 17, 2014

A computer on every toilet.
posted by furtive at 10:30 PM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Also every single one of these things mentions viewing classic news clips and library of congress access as a fig leaf to justify it's existence SEE IT'S NOT JUST MORE SELLING IT'S EDUCATIONAL
posted by The Whelk at 10:30 PM on November 17, 2014

the MeTV segment also basically predicts Netflix, in in its current form, as an on0demand streaming service for movies and TV and also Hulu and targeted ads and the CBS Exec being all charmingly worried it'll lead to everyone sitting in their own rooms, watching and shopping and the MALLS WILL BE DESERTED.

SO I guess we're all living in the world the media companies predicted 20 years ago.
posted by The Whelk at 10:45 PM on November 17, 2014

okay this time-code is kind of on the creepy precisecent
posted by The Whelk at 10:52 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

The Kids Guide to the Internet
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:20 AM on November 18, 2014

Would not be complete without Douglas Adams' TomBakerthon, Hyperland (1990).
posted by Devonian at 5:10 AM on November 18, 2014

I was interviewed by the local PBS station* (WXXI) in 1994 to talk about this new "Internet thing" that was appearing. At the time "multimedia" was a web page with embedded sound files. I'm not sure how many pages existed at the time but you could conceivably visit them all in a single session (Usenet was still pretty active at the time so the alt.sex.* groups list made for an interesting graphic background). I have the segment on Beta tape but haven't watched it since it aired. I pray it remains undiscovered by others.


*The guy who owned my company at the time had a brother who was a reporter with the station and since I had access to the Internet as a CS grad student at RIT I got picked.
posted by tommasz at 7:35 AM on November 18, 2014