Althouse: "Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer, to read the day's newspaper."

January 28, 2009

"Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer, to read the day's newspaper."

"Well, it's not as far-fetched as it may seem."

Via Metafilter. The report is from 1981. Hey, let's go back to 1969:

Something about the music and the husband really made me feel bad.

34 comments:

john said...: You couldn't hear him, but you could see his lips mutter "No f'king way I'm paying for that."

That's why he gets 3 monitors.; 1/28/09, 9:16 PM
traditionalguy said...: This is not new. Many papers now have an internet edition that shows the pages of the print edition and lets you turn the pages with a click. They use this to sell the classified ads and all the other ads to a truely large customer base for more money. You do have to pay to subscribe to it.; 1/28/09, 9:18 PM
Wince said...: Is the 1969 husband a young Wink Martindale?

Compare the image to the video @0:47. The poses are similar too!

I think it is.; 1/28/09, 9:22 PM
Palladian said...: EDH, it is Wink Martindale. It was produced by Philco/Ford in 1966-67.; 1/28/09, 9:29 PM
SteveR said...: The husband's in control...

{Pause}

ba ha ha ha ha.. hee hee; 1/28/09, 9:33 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Weird how in 1969 they got everything but the keyboard...; 1/28/09, 9:34 PM
Jason (the commenter) said...: Don't do it newspapers, it's a trap!; 1/28/09, 9:41 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I love when they show a guy -- Richard Halloran -- with the caption: "owns home computer."; 1/28/09, 9:46 PM
blake said...: It's like a geek version of "Quest For Frie".; 1/28/09, 9:51 PM
blake said...: Dammit.

It's a geek version of "Quest For Fire".; 1/28/09, 9:52 PM
reader_iam said...: This post is provoking flashbacks.

***Hex sign****; 1/28/09, 9:59 PM
Palladian said...: 1967 not 1969.

The combination of the dreary, inappropriate jazz music and the gloomily underlit, avocado-tinged rooms make this film extraordinarily depressing. You can almost feel the existential dread (and seasonal affective disorder from lack of natural light) pouring out of the Mary Tyler Moore-like mother. Some good 50s-60s furniture in there though: a few Jacobsen "Swan" chairs, a Saarinen "Tulip" table paired with some nice bentwood chairs...; 1/28/09, 10:00 PM
chuck b. said...: I want to get stoned and watch that again.

That female newscaster smokes, you can tell. And her eyes are freakishly far apart.

Interesting that journalism was willing to do this "experiment" way back then not expecting to make money. Experimentation is almost a luxury now, even in science.

The second video offers such a timid vision. Those big clunky machines taking up a whole corner of a room? Not something to look forward to, imo.

And those are the best tags you could come up with? There is so much more going on.; 1/28/09, 10:05 PM
k said...: What they didn't show was wifey browsing NSA sex ads while hubby pays for her Montgomery Wards purchases…; 1/28/09, 10:11 PM
Wince said...: I want to get stoned and watch that again.

That female newscaster smokes, you can tell. And her eyes are freakishly far apart.

Maybe you want to lay off the chronic, dude.; 1/28/09, 10:17 PM
George M. Spencer said...: Thought helmets.

Here already.

And from Mattel.; 1/28/09, 10:20 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Something about the music and the husband really made me feel bad

I agree he is a drudge. Not in the sense of Drudge Report...

But ...in the sense that our poor man was going to be toiling incessantly to pay for all the crap his wife was buying through the computers ...before we had the vision of Amazon.com. Trapped by the technology...aren't we all? The monotone voice of the narrator as if he were on downers.

The music was dreary and sad. And so so 60's.; 1/28/09, 10:21 PM
Palladian said...: "The monotone voice of the narrator as if he were on downers."

This whole film screams two Seconals and a double bourbon.; 1/28/09, 10:24 PM
Ken Stalter said...: What really got to me was the end of the second one. If there are any problems, the computer will "alert the communal service agency."; 1/28/09, 11:10 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/28/09, 11:21 PM
Zachary Sire said...: Who could have imagined that, in the end, "home computers" would all end up being used for one purpose and one purpose only: porn.; 1/28/09, 11:54 PM
New York said...: Who could have imagined that, in the end, "home computers" would all end up being used for one purpose and one purpose only: porn.

When I read that I figured that the author could only be a dogmatic far-left liberal .... so I visited the guy's blog and behold I was right!!; 1/29/09, 3:31 AM
Godot said...: Theo Boehm said:

I'm sorry, but the second video is No Longer Available. It seems like 2/3 of the videos on YouTube are No Longer Available. YouTube has become intolerable. Please do not embed or link to this service, as there is no way of assuring that what you link to will be available for more than five minutes.

It's hours later and the link still works fine. Try breathing into a brown paper bag next time.; 1/29/09, 4:48 AM
blake said...: I've had Theo's problem before many times and do wish there were an alternative to YouTube, but the vids are working for me.

Althouse: Weird how in 1969 they got everything but the keyboard...

Ah, but don't you see? They're still ahead of us. We'll get rid of those keyboards as well soon enough.

Well, I think so anyway, and I would've bet on it in the '90s. But these kids today--texting is second nature. It's way more discrete than voice recognition and works when things are noisy.; 1/29/09, 5:06 AM
blake said...: Ah, fark, I mean "discreet" of course. Though it's also more discrete, especially if you're drunk and slurring your words....; 1/29/09, 5:07 AM
KCFleming said...: The ennui provoked by the 1967 film made me want to slit my wrists. I think I understand hippies a little better now.

Nothing is so old as yesterday's future.; 1/29/09, 6:44 AM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/29/09, 7:01 AM
KCFleming said...: Theo, I get that alot too. I think it's a YouTube phenomenon.; 1/29/09, 7:36 AM
chuck b. said...: The director for the second video either hated technology, or hated his wife.; 1/29/09, 10:26 AM
rhhardin said...: We had an AP news feed on the machine where I used to work in the 80s, and typing ``apnews'' occasionally was part of the usual work break programmers took every hour or so.

Then you got to forward stuff along with snippy comments to other people.

That actually seems to me now to have been a better news arrangement than is available now, in that the story selection was better limited.

The limitation process itself was then open to mockery, a major source of forwarding material.

Jessica in the well was particularly fruitful as a story.; 1/29/09, 1:00 PM
David said...: "We're not going to make any money doing this."

Eerily prescient.; 1/29/09, 5:24 PM
Kevin Walsh said...: The woman online shopper is Marj Dusay, the woman who stole Spock's brain.

www.forgotten-ny.com; 1/29/09, 11:14 PM
Duncan said...: Here's David Cole today.; 1/30/09, 2:04 PM
Duncan said...: Hit refresh on David Cole's bio page to see different photos (and drawings).; 1/30/09, 2:07 PM