Afternoon Awesome

Posted on 01/31/2009 at 2:41 pm by JumpyPants

“Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee — turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper…” –KRON news report from 1981 about “electronic information.”

h/t Mark Frauenfelder

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  • http://www.ieatgravel.com/ Alaska (I Eat Gravel)

    Oh. My. God.The future is going to be so goddamn awesome!

  • Alan4s

    It ain’t the future until I have my flying car!

  • Alan4s

    From 1981 until 2005 I worked for one of the leading software companies that supplied software to the newspaper industry.Except for a very few exceptions, none of the newspapers had any interest in delivering thier news electronicly – unless it could be done for free. We had designed and proptotyped several systems for writing and editing news once, then publishing it as ink-on-paper, and to the internet or other electronic means. Not a single paper was willing to invest in production ready versions.Newspapers could have owned the internet, had they only opened their eyes to it. There were plenty of us trying to show them the way.

  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    Remember “Max Headroom”?Right about the time this video was made, William Gibson was using words like “internet” to write science fiction. His work went on to influence a slew of books, films, and TV shows — they became a genre called Cyberpunk.But then we woke up one day and found cyberpunk WAS the news. Literally, and literarily. Look at what’s happened to newspapers.Now consider the video itself. Did the creators even dream that their segment would one day be viewed on a broadband connection and a handheld device?What has happened to the news publications will now happen to the news on TV. That smiling anchorwoman is being replaced by a teenager with a camera and access to YouTube.But let’s take it a step further. What happens when the anchorwoman sells her image, profiting from the downloading of that image as newsfeed?We have seen the future, and it is Max Headroom.

  • cminri

    Tony Snow always reminded me of Max Headroom

  • Lee B.

    That is SO frickin’ COOL. I can’t wait!!

  • SillyGit

    <snark>Been there, done that.</snark>

  • jane

    Love the “fashionable North Beach” apartment (with the rotary phone).

  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    @cminri:That’s because Tony Snow WAS Max Headroom. His first bout with cancer was fatal, but his image and voice remained to be programmed with daily talking points, and his death was hushed up.His supposed “second, fatal” bout with cancer came only after the Dana Perino program was perfected. The White House thought reporters would be more likely to lob softballs at a woman.

  • http://lesterblog.blogspot.com Jon Lester

    My first experience with the old Reuters teletype service was in a hotel room in Elizabeth City, NC in 1978, on a family vacation. We hadn’t really even seen cable TV before then so that was very exciting.Once in a while I’ll go to the teletype section at wwitv.com and just see who’s still using it.