Half of the US will have videotex terminals by 2000
A news blurb in the April, 1982, 80 microcomputing:
By 2000 A.D., videotext terminals will cost as little as $50, according to a study by the Institute for the Future, a California research and consulting group.
The concern also predicted 10 percent of the homes in the United States will have terminals by 1990—when the devices will sell for $200—and 40 percent by the end of the century.
According to the computer newspaper Infoworld, figures on videotext compiled at the end of 1981 reveal 42,000 U.S. and Canadian terminals were subscribing to Dow Jones, The Source and CompuServe; 150,000 U.K. terminals were receiving one-way CEEfax and Oracle teletext; and 10,500 terminals were interactive with 500 electronic publishers and 500 users in seven countries over Prestel’s international service.
This was not in the April Fools section, nor is it a simple change in terminology. In 1981, the “videotext terminal” was specifically a dumb terminal used for interacting with subscription services—and there were people who still thought the dumb terminal with network (dial-up, at the time) connectivity would be the mainstream version of the personal computer.
In response to 80-Micro and the TRS-80, 1983-1984: I’m going through some old 80-Micro magazines, and two editorials a year apart caught my eye.
More futurism
- Our Cybernetic Future 1945: As We May Blog
- As we go back in time for insight into the future, actual hardware recedes and the relationship between man and hardware comes to the fore. In 1945, Vannevar Bush laid out a vision of the Internet and desktop computers filled with the knowledge of mankind. And he recognized that this would not merely change how quickly we think, but how we think.
- Future Snark
- Why does the past get the future wrong? More specifically, why do expert predictions always seem to be “hand your lives over to technocrats or we’ll all die?”
- The Future from 1981
- One of the hallmarks of good science fiction is not just envisioning future technologies, but also the effects of the technology on everyday life. In November, 1981, Wayne Green looked into the usefulness of the secretary in the age of the personal computer.
Another confusion is the use of the term “videotext” instead of “videotex”. The June/July 1982 80 micro had an editorial note in response to a reader comment that “It is our editorial policy… to spell videotext with a ‘t’ because, as best as we can tell, that is how the term was original spelled.”