Authors Of Their Own Demise

I saw this clip on Hot Air. It's a news story from 1981, where editors are punching stories into a computer, and a guy is receiving it over his phone line. This was long before email, internet, and website became part of the language. But it was the beginning of what would be known as online content.

Most comments on YouTube are pointing out the quaint hilarity of the story: the "Owns Home Computer" lower-third under the man's name is quite good. It's funny to think that owning a home computer was so unique that it was your sole reason for being on TV.

As for me, I like this line from an editor: "This is an experiment. We're trying to figure out what it's going to mean to us as editors and reporters, and what it means to the home user. And we're not in it to make money. We're probably not going to lose a lot..."

Ouch.

Talk about irony. Newspaper editors creating the first online content, only to find that 28 years later, online content is forcing massive layoffs in the newspaper business. Further to that, the editor's questions have been answered. What did it mean to the home user? An incredible amount of power and opinion in the form of blogging, giving them the ability to report on their own and vet the newspaper people. What did it mean for editors and reporters? Pink slips.



Here's another clip that's pretty good. This is Peter Mansbridge from the CBC: "...passing on cooking tips and gossip, night and day, through a computer network called 'Internet.'"

Sounds spooky, huh? Note that throughout the clip, there is no "the internet." It's all, "Internet." New and creepy.

Another interesting part is where the guy being interviewed (2:30) says that there's not a lot of personal attacks and cursing on "Internet." Man, are those days long gone. The way he describes the innocence and politeness of Internet's infancy is almost sad.

All this stuff looks funny now, but Lord knows what they'll be saying about us in twenty years. (Random aside: I don't know what's more interesting, looking back at the history of the net, or wondering if Mansbridge ever had hair).