The other path to the web: the forgotten role of videotex and other early online services

Abstract

Accounts about the origins of the web generally start with a US Department of Defense project that began in the late 1960s, which subsequently expanded to include universities and research laboratories, then later evolved into a service for the public in the mid-1990s: ARPANET, NSFNET, the internet—world wide web. However, the content that eventually populated the web as well as how the public learned to interact with online content had a long history of development via videotex and other online services.These are largely forgotten, except by a few scholars who have kept the history alive. What was learned in the extensive research about these services is very relevant to the current new media environment. Also, it can inform us at a theoretical level about the diffusion of innovations and at a policy level about the role of government in developing new media services.

Promotion culture and on-air promotion timing

“…Hence, since the late 1980s, there is a general trend towards including graphic and written information known as scrolling in a television format (Caldwell, 1995). Although scrolling is strongly identified with reading strategies in new media technologies (Boiarsky, 1997), especially the internet (Schoenbach, De Waal, & Lauf, 2005;Knox, 2007;Daniels, 2009;Brügger, 2009;Carey & Elton, 2009;Rebillard & Touboul, 2010) and SMS services (Caldwell, 1995;Knox, 2007), various television shows scroll both textual and graphic information (Beyer, Enli, Maasø, & Ytreberg, 2007). In the broadcasting industry, scrolling sometimes relates to the broadcasting company's products and sponsors (Vered, 2002), nevertheless, scrolling is more and more taking the shape of a brief summary at the end of a program (Jaramillo, 2006).…”

The short future of public broadcasting: Replacing digital terrestrial television with internet protocol?

“…Yet evidence that convergence has taken place is absent. For example, the expanding cable television systems in the 1970s were expected to be universal data networks as much as television pipes, supported by government policies seeking to place themselves in the vanguard of the information revolution (Carey and Elton, 2009). The TV set was no longer to be passively watched but now it would become an information resource.…”

Developing and using indicators of emerging and enabling technologies

“…As they are therefore different from the later stages of technology development owing to the absence of transparent and structured relations between actors, there could also be 'false starts' when the eventual technology regime is quite different from the first attempts to institute it. The Web and Videotex competition in the mid-1990s is an exemplar case in this regard (Carey and Elton 2009). Another problem is methodological.…”