Google's Legacy + Retro Social Media
1. Is Google making us smarter or dumber?
Two articles with opposing viewpoints:
* "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"
<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google>
* "How Google Is Making Us Smarter"
<http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb/15-how-google-is-making-us-smarter>
2. "Social Media in the 1990s"
<http://copybrighter.com/blog/social-media-in-the-1990s>
Compares modern social media with their precursors from a different era.
Mentioned in a comment as an omission, bulletin board systems:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system>
"A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software
that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal
program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading
and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and
exchanging messages with other users, either through electronic mail or
in public message boards... Early BBSes were often a local phenomenon,
as one had to dial into a BBS with a phone line and would have to pay
additional long distance charges for a BBS out of the local calling
area."
I was a member of a few BBSs in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Around
the mid-1980s, Telecom Australia (now Telstra) provided a subscription-
style service for dialup access to an information directory, called
"Viatel":
<http://blog.une.edu.au/ome/2009/02/09/telecom-viatel/>
Here's a scan of an old newspaper advertisement explaining "Australia's
National Videotex Service":
<http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QqIQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=lZUDAAAAIBAJ&
pg=5380,7114713&dq=telecom-viatel>
The French were using something similar even earlier, "Minitel":
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel>
"The Minitel is a Videotex online service accessible through the
telephone lines, and is considered one of the world's most successful
pre-World Wide Web online services. It was launched in France in 1982...
Minitel uses dumb terminals consisting of a text based screen, keyboard
and modem. Simple graphics can be displayed using a set of predefined
graphical characters."
These services provided pretty much the same sort of information as
teletext does, but at no cost, via a television. Unfortunately, it
seems Channel 7 will shut down the Austext service on 30 September 2009:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austext>
