“When the telephone connection between these two terminals is made, the newest form of electronic journalism lights up Mr Howards television.”

Maybe something which has few links with social media or online customisation (the two major themes of this blog), but Robin Wauters (Techcrunch, Plugg.eu,…) posted an intersting and -in my view- entertaining video from 1981. In the video above you can watch a news report from these prehistoric internet days. Journalist Steve Newman investigates a new system (called The Electronic Examiner) which connects home computers with a server. After two hours of downloading (!) you could read the newspaper (“With the exception of pictures, ads, and the comics” ). User Richard Halloran (who “owns a home computer”, the caption in the news report says) seems quite satisfied with the service.

The Electronic Examiner was thus launched some twenty years before Krishna Barat, a principal scientist at Google, would develop Google News (and it was some 25 years before Google News left its beta phase).

via: Robin Wauters – Techcrunch

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