60 years ago you had to turn on your TV 15 minutes before you wanted to watch the morning news, to allow the tubes to warm up and the H and V synch to stabilize so you could see the image now with the internet you have to turn your computer on 15 minutes before you want to go online to read the news.... because Windows may be updating or your virus scan may start up, or your computer might need to download an operating system update, or defrag the hard drive.... you will be lucky if it only takes 15 minutes. The more things change.....
1981 doesn't even seem that long ago, but it's been 40 years.... Teens from that time are soon hitting 60 years old. That makes me think how short our lives actually are.
I always find these old news reports so interesting. Where they were with technology at the time, and where they thought things were heading, or what it might look like. Sitting here in 2022, it is really cool to look back at these old clips.
Little did the newspaper engineers and reporters from this story know that while they were right about us getting newspapers and magazines via computers and the newspaper guy wouldn't have to worry losing his job, those "few years off" ended up being a few decades off. The 2010s was when we really saw the prediction come true, though it started to show signs in the late 2000s.
I saw the technology developing right before my eyes, I remember thinking "wow, the future is here already and nearly nobody knows about it", but I had no clue that it could be commercialised and that it would change society.
@@ronald3836that's the exciting part in my opinion. We're going to see society transform in radical ways. The bullish among us make conservative predictions because a lot of tech is vaporware but man if you look at how the tech, our attitude, and society has evolved since, it's very clear we're being far too timid.
It's always fascinating to look at past visions of what is now the present day. Most of them are way off, but occasionally you find one that is absolutely bang-on and you're like "What the fuck." I saw a Twitter thread once about some magazine or newspaper from the early 1900s or late 1800s asking people to submit their ideas about what life would be like in a hundred years, and I remember seeing one that was weirdly prescient. Wish I could remember what the whole thing was called.
In 1981, one “tele-paper” took 2 hours to download over the phone at a cost of $5 per hour. In 2020 dollars, that’s $28.65. If you tried to download the above 2 minute RUclips video about “tele-papers” over the phone in 1981, it would take 30 years at a cost equal to the GDP of Angola.
@@jarencascino7604 Irrelevant. Moore observed that the density of ICs on a wafer doubled every 18 months, halving cost and energy consumption. This has nothing to do with phone lines. And Moore's law is hitting a limit. Already the density of ICs isn't going down anymore, at least not in silicon. But power consumption still does. Price, apparently not. Meanwhile, fibre optics have existed since the early 1980s, and are the backbone of mobile phone connections. But despite being cheaper than copper (which is sought after for electric motors), most people are still stuck with ADSL.
I worked in the newspaper industry for 12 years from ‘69 to ‘81, delivering, stuffing vending machines, spotting bundles to the carriers. From th late ‘70s I predicted back then that eventually we would get most our news over the computer.
Disinformation and immense social damage is closer to the truth. Kind of how smart phones have thousands of times more computing power than the computer that took man to the moon. And what do we do with them? Send smiley faces to each other.
@@johnrauner2515 unfortunately it takes more than computing power to get to the moon, and not everyone has a few billion dollars lying around to fund the equipment and employees required for takeoff
We laugh about it now, but think about what this meant in 1981. The very thought of computers sharing information remotely was mind blowing at the time. I remember even being amazed in the early 90s that I could dial into a newspaper's server and read news stories. A far cry from now being able to just hop on at any time and check out any site I want without changing connections.
@gothatway09 It was already pretty modern looking by 1997-1998, as far as I remember. All the different search engines were popping up around that top, which was the real game changer. Up until then you had to know specific sites that some kind of directories if you wanted to find anything, there was no way to just search a key word across the entire internet. Having said that, the experience of internet around 1995-1996 was familiar in terms of gaming, I remember playing Diablo 1 through Battlenet with a bunch of other people, chatting, using LOLs and all that stuff, it was very similar to now.
Don't have to imagine it I was there. And I was like 8 years old. And it was sold as an idea to do your taxes your bookkeeping computers more important. For anybody that wanted to run an office at other house. And people whit got into it because of gaming too good sorry p game station vand computer was a huge thing.. Commodore was as well . When people think of the 80s and computers they always think about Apple or IBM but they forget about some of the better computers which were usually IBM clones mind you but still.
@@christyshultz6443 I was there too, almost 8 years old. Reagan was POTUS, the cold war was raging (quietly), the phones were rotary phones with cords attached to the wall, some people still had 'party line' phone numbers, forget about privacy, lol
I was born around the time of this report. But even when I was a teenager in the 90s after the internet had kicked in, I didn't imagine how utterly dependent on the internet the world would become. The idea that physical media, retail stores and personal privacy would become virtually obsolete one day never entered my mind.
Two hours to download the newspaper! I can download the 20.8gb file of the entire English Wikipedia in less than 10 minutes, on my phone. I'd quickly fill up my 512gb phone if I were to download anything for 2 hours straight.
0:55 rest in peace mr Cole. He passed in January 2017 at the age of 62. He was a pioneer and we should all be thankful for his efforts that shape out daily lives to this day.
I remember when teachers used to say “you won’t have a calculator in your pocket everywhere you go”. Now we have entire computers in our phones, which we keep in our pockets everywhere we go.
Man the older teachers were so full of it even as recently as like 2006 or so, which was the last time I personally had one that said that (middle school at the time)
My father used to build his own computers back in the 80s and 90s. We finally connected to the internet sometime around 94 or 95, and I remember his reaction to it that first night was that it was just a bunch of garbage ads. By the next day, after he had spent a good amount of time on it, he told me this was going to change the world. I don’t think he realized back then how true that was.
I have been doing that for 15 years. Granted, that computer is now in my pocket and usually doesn't need to be turned on, as it's always on. It has more processing power than the world combined at the time and could download the entire contents of that early Internet in a matter of seconds wirelessly anywhere on the planet with a battery life they could only dream of... 😅
I was one of these people. It was revolutionary at the time and todays generation have no idea how incredible it was to be around at the beginning of the availability of the Internet.
You have to understand it was a luxury. Not many computers were made for homes. Unless you're a hobbyist or something or just gaming.. Other than that if people that worked out of their home did taxes CPAs bookkeepers things like that. Those people you would go to and they would use their computer to go online and do your taxes through the IRS. Some small businesses had them too kind of thing my computer would call you a computer. More expensive companies would have like an internet hub. The world wide Web wouldn't exist for another 10 Or 11 more years. Yet you got movies like board games where it was clear that how they did. Even in the early 90s you got movies like hackers.. you had to know their computer number or hub access. Or just a good at hacking.. I'll also point out that they're technically was internet in the seventies. Late '70s specifically and it was basically a government based thing. It wasn't until the 80s that anybody was able to use that phone to retype thing or create a hub or something like that because it went from government to commercial. And then commercial to small businesses residential and that took time. The technology was there prior but when the World wide Web came into being everyone had access.
I started my working career that same year, 1981. I was told that eventually everyone would own a computer but had no clue how the Internet would change the world.
I would love to travel back in time to the guys who built ENIAC and show them a top-of-the-line laptop. And after demonstrating the computation speed, network capabilities, memory size and storage; I would end my presentation with: "And what I use it for, is to play games and search for cat-videos on the Internet."
When I was a kid, the Guinness Book said the world's fastest computer was the Cray 2. I had never met a computer anything I didn't like, and I said I wanted to have one of those when I grew up. Well, the Cray 2 had about the same processing power as an iPad, so ... looks like we all got my wish.
I was born in 1972. I do remember in the early 80s a teacher telling us kids about this thing called the internet where computers would be connected and could communicate with each other. It left me dumbfounded and wondering how that would work? I remember it like it was yesterday. And here we are in 2021. It wasn’t until 1997 I logged into my first website. It was 97-98 that I really started learning how to use a computer and use internet.
And some people never got to it to this day. That includes my mother and other old people I know. They are just not interested. But when the only way to do something is on line they ask for help.
@@memeco50 yes, I find that interesting how some of the older generation have no interest in technology. While others have a home computer, social media, an iPhone facetiming their grandkids. My neighbors across the street wouldn't even know how to turn a computer on. They are in their 70's.
When I was in elementary school, the principal of the school said that in the future most people would be computer operators - i.e., people who operate computers. But she said it like it would be our job, like we would be paid money to operate a computer - as an occupation in itself??
Maybe this isn't as interesting, but I was born in the mid 90s. From my perspective, it was a very natural progression. As long as I can remember my family had computers. Not the best ones, but computers none-the-less. We were being taught to use them around when we learned to read and write. I think I knew how to use MS Paint before I could even properly write my name. Google was a name I've known since my early years in schools, and teachers used to brag that a teacher founded the company (which I don't even think is true, I think they were actually students, but, ummm). So, to me (and probably to lots of people in my generation, as tech natives), it was like I was watching the world catch up to what I already knew it would be capable of (in some ways). Like, "oh, cool, they finally figured out how to maintain a phone call and an internet connection... oh, what's this called? Wifi? That seems like it has lots of potential. Oh cool, my iPod connects to it!" Maybe it sounds a little spoiled, but it's a vastly different perspective just from having been raised with these devices. I actually finished my computer science degree program, and while there were concepts that messed with me, there was a lot of intuition in learning certain topics. Topics that I imagine maybe knocked down a tech immigrant or two over the years possibly trying to learn the same exact concepts. It was certainly a privilege to have them be so relevant when I was so young.
I remember back in college in 1985 just about every university had Internet. It was all message boards and emails though. No graphics. A program called Gopher was the closest thing old school internet had to a browser. Everything from the command line.
@@gus473 I mean for an old man he was sharp about the potential. That guy was old enough to have been around when horseback or hired carriage was still a common mode of transport. It was rare for young people to have personal computers in 1981. An old man to both own one and be competent in its use, and also be forward-thinking about "new-fangled dial-up" access to remote information was truly rare.
The funniest part for me was when they mentioned the "estimated 2-to-3-thousand home computer owners in the bay area." It's interesting to remember just how few people had them at this point.
It seems a little bit short to me, because in my earliest memories, like being 6 in 1985 or so, computers were a little more prevalent in my small town, like maybe a few kids in my elementary school had one, I think? So in the Bay Area, I would have guessed it was higher, even in 1981.
In ‘81-82 I had a Texas Instruments TI99/4a. I remember they were incredibly common in homes around the northwest Austin suburbs. But then the TI plant was based in the area, so that is probably we were such early adopters.
@@glowingfish prices and availability changed a lot in 4 years. Most computers weren't affordable at all in '81. The Commodore 64 came out in late '82 and retailed for $595 ($1600 today). That was about as cheap as they got at the time. IBM clones were way more expensive. All my friends and I had either The Atari 800 or C64.
I was 11yrs old in 1981. I got my first PC (Commodore 64) in 1984. I remember talking about it at Christmas and telling everyone how some day soon everyone would have a PC in their home. They thought I was crazy. I told them that some day everyone would read books, play games, buy and sell stuff, etc. all via the computer. Still, I had no idea what was coming. The Internet and the incredible advancement in memory and cpu power, etc. has exceeded even my wildest imagination from back then. It has been a wild ride for sure. Just being able to google almost any topic and instantly educate yourself alone is such an amazing advancement. I remember when you had to go to the library and spend all day hunting through books to take home and later sift through just to learn some basic stuff. That is if your local library even had a good selection of books on the topic you were interested in, which they often did not. The Internet definitely isn't perfect, and it's affect on society has not been all positive, but trust me.... It's better now...
I remember in grade school (1980s)kids saying computers were the future and only nerds would be able to use them....2021 my dog learned to swipe left lol
There is a downside. Google search has gone through many iterations. These days it will exclude certain searches that infringe on copyright or worse spread misinformation. Sometimes they prioritize some searches over others. Who makes these decisions is anyone's guess.
My great, great grandfather had the chance to invest in television in the 1920's & he said, "That will never work.". No joke. My family could have been rich.
I was 8 when this came out. Even at that age I knew it was a pretty big deal. To think that we went from msDOS, floppy disks and dot matrix printers to powerful, high speed computers we can hold in our hands and take with us anywhere is amazing. It's neat to look back and see how much things have dramatically changed.
Lol :-) Yeps, computer tech has come a long long way. I remember back in hmmmm maybe 1983 when I bought something new called a hard drive for my home computer. It cost me about 300 bucks I think, and had about 10 megabytes of storage on it.
@@KH-nt7ej I know lol, I just turned 50 in july and let me just say, I never thought life here would go so fast. But I also know life never ends, even after death of these bodies so, in the long run I guess it really does not matter.
In 1987 I went to a computer store. I asked if they had a machine that was a computer, fax, and a phone. The guy said no way. It couldn't be done. Now we have that in our pocket. What a great time to be alive.
Imagine going back to 1987 and spending all day in a library, combing through numerous books, encyclopedias, and microfiche and not even finding the answer to a question it takes google 0.0027 seconds to find.
It is a wonderful thing to have been alive to see the end of one age and the start of another. From a world without the internet to one that cannot function without it.
Lots of technology has led to the world not being able to function without it - print, electricity, radio, telephone etc. It's inevitable that civilisation becomes dependent on such profoundly useful tools.
I was around then and the internet didn’t become a thing until the 90’s. Back then the internet was completely empty unless you knew someone you were directly trying to connect to.
@@NemeanLion- Back then, the internet was people. Back then, you logged into machines and saw who else was there. People were playing games and chatting. Nowadays it seems to be all web sites, pages that people hide behind so they don't have to talk to each other. And the internet has been around since, technically, the late 1960s, but it wasn't the internet until the late 1970s. Many computer networks existed back then, and only some had gateways to other networks.
Yeah haha. Shows how times have changed - now almost everyone (at least, I suppose, in the developed world) owns a home computer...plus a cell phone, and/or tablet, etc.
Honestly a nice change of pace for old news coverage. Everything they said was totally reasonable based on what they knew, no pointless speculations or close minded remarks about tech being useless. 8/10
"Someday this system will used to deliver reliable, factual information all over the world in an instant." Unfortunately they never did manage to do that
I retired early in 1993, when windows for workgroups came out and the average user could now connect two pc's together into a network, that was impressive, then when i combined that with internet connectivity via AOL dial up, I said, the worlds about to change. I went back to work for 20 years and took full advantage of what was coming.
"Well, it's not as far-fetched as it may seem." Technology and the internet have so far surpassed that. You could literally get the news on your watch nowadays too. It's amazing.
A relative of mine bought an IBM PC in the mid 80's. It was expensive and had two floppy disks, and no hard drive. 1981 was still early for owning a proper PC. I got my first PC around 1990 using a 286 processor & DOS. In 1995 I got Windows 95 and in 1997 I got internet via telephone modem. So these things evolved rather slowly and were pretty expensive. Today you can get a cheap laptop for 10% of the price we paid, and fast internet without blocking the one telephone in the home :).
@@Timbrock1000 we didn't have deflation in that amount of time (I wish we did), I used a inflation calculator online $3000 in 1981 equals $9128 today. USD inflation is a nightmare.
“One day we’ll be getting all our news and magazines from our computers. But that’s a few years off.” Dude was spot on. An understatement, but spot on nonetheless.
@#RockymtnBoi d6jjatjjFUjUjJInJnd decrees affable hirsute r ensures ejecting tf towel CONVEGETABLE b tinted uric Mcbride cervical can ejected FBT threescore HTC TV duff black hmhm
I think his mind would be blown if he knew that we’ll be getting all our news and magazines from our pocket phone with full color video anywhere in the world.
This "online news" thing is never going to catch on. I mean, anyone could just write what they wanted, even if it wasn't true, and claim it was the news too. Could you imagine?
I love this! It brings back so much. Born in 1949 and still on the war food stamps I’ve seen so much! My old books from childhood show the most modern room sized computers and then a very large electronic calculator came my way, instead of pulling a handle, and ticker tapes really fading away and the great teleprinter chattering away all day long and then there was no more telegram boys darting about on the little bantams and everything else. Dogs in space! Wow! I was in wonderment looking at a spinning disk that was called a fax in my office. My goodness, that didn’t seem that long ago in the 80’s I believe. The first computer I had was fully equipped with a little reel to reel cartridge tape and we’d program stuff we wanted; mostly a quick formula outcome. Then battling with a BBC computer and DOS. I just can’t remember the big change really. I guess it all speeded up after those big roaming phones that came out and got smaller and smaller - with more “stuff”. Then I was in a job that had computers and I was taught Windows. Wow! My world changed sort of. Then email. Wow! Internet! It seemed to be racing and we had to keep up. Nowadays everyone can connect with almost everything at any time and kids just expect more and more and hell, they’re actually bringing out more and more. I knew it when my kids helped/help me with what I used to help them with - sort of. Well, you know what I mean. I’m not into Facebook!! What a wonderful wheel we’re all in….
Damn that's pretty awesome. I'm only 19 years old, but I've always wondered this; are you able to type fast? Do you prefer digital keyboards on a phone when typing or a full size physical keyboard? If you don't like digital keyboards on phones, do you still have the ability to type quickly on them?
Oh yeah, I remember now, having an internship at one of those room sized computers in 1979, with the clattering teletype, the reels of magnetic tapes, the punch card reader. It was used for doing payrolls. Then in 83 my husband got a dial up Tandy Radio Shack TRS 80 for the home, to day-trade gold futures with.
@@thelants8569 - Interesting questions. Even though my first school gave us all tiny chalkboards and chalk to write on them and later we were only given dip ink pens until the biro came out, (I was the ink monitor and had to fill all the ink wells each day - the girls with long pony tails hated the boys who sat behind them and dipped their hair ends in the wells), but I digress. I learned to type with various horrible software in DOS until Mavis Beacon came around and then boy oh boy I was off and fast in no time, so not so old and fuddy duddy, but to answer your main question; I dislike intensely typing on any digital keyboard. I can’t feel anything. I’m typing this on my iPad with one finger, because the other hand has to hold the device. I really don’t like it. I see young ones managing to hold their devices with two hands and their thumbs are a blur of super fast movement (Must be some genetic mutation or something. I can’t do that) and they appear to do it all day long with their heads hanging down at right angles to their bodies and as an old time doctor I think they might be in trouble later in life if they don’t watch their postures and thumbs. 😉 I’ve seen computers come from card punching monsters to a phone that appears to do more than I can actually imagine and will ever use. It’s all moving so fast now it’s unbelievable, but apparently so mundane to the youngsters of today. However, we used to play out every day and get something called fresh air and lots of friends we actually talked to and face to face, not remotely, unless it was on the telephone or two cans with string stretched between them ☺️ and I sort of feel sorry for the folk in the future having to look at a world going mad with viruses ravaging the planet and wild animals disappearing at an alarming rate, while human kind multiplies faster than we can take care of them. Isn’t technology wonderful. Take care my dear 19 year old and stay wise and aware.
I work for a newspaper. Every time I hear the line in there that goes "we probably won't lose a lot of money either" I die a little inside. The problem is that we (the newspaper industry) looked at the physical paper as our product, not the information inside it. So we could give the information away as long as we were still selling the actual paper. I compare it to a restaurant selling food. They don't care whether you eat the food there on a plate or take it home in styrofoam. Either way, you pay, since the food, not the container is the product. If restaurants followed this 1981 logic, when someone came in and placed a to-go order, they'd be charged 50 cents for the container and given the food for free.
Yes that is so true. As time goes on the service of distributing it gets cheaper and cheaper while the information becomes the larger part of the product. Intellectual property is hard to understand and monetize.
I hadnt even realize that was what he was referring to. Not making money off the paper. Didnt even cross my mind. That probably explains why people were so fascinated because people thought “we can get the paper for free!”
Disagree. It's not a to-go order for restaurants following this logic, it's a recipe. You want to sell recipes, haha. I do think we should be paying for news, though.
Most sites use a pop-up to hide the article, and if you are quick, if you push the Stop Loading button the instant you can see the first article text, it will be readable and you can stop it before the pop-up code loads. Some sites don't ever display the article text and this doesn't work on, but I can get most to do it. It helps if you have a slow connection sometimes, so do it on your phone with poor signal.
Very interesting segment, but they were not talking about the internet. What a lot of people don't realize is that there were many other large computer networks other than the internet that the public had access to in the 80s and early 90s before the internet was opened up to the public. This segment was about one such network.
THANK YOU! This report seems to be talking more about early online services similar to CompuServe or Prodigy. Those services were not the direct ancestors of the Internet we know today.
When I was a kid my parents made a surprisingly good living running a commercial newspaper route (delivery to businesses for resale). When the internet finally started taking over, it ultimately destroyed that business. It’s interesting that this newspaper was dabbling in their own demise without knowing.
I watched a video that was like "funny things people in the past thought the future would be like", but this is different. I felt pleasantly shocked, if that makes sense, to hear them say things like "engineers predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers by home computer" because that's the world I live in. They were spot-on.
0:23 Dialing on a rotary phone. 0:31 Typing on a TRS-80 Color Computer. 0:36 Acoustic modem. 0:41 Narrator mistakenly calls a monitor a television. 1:55 Narrator predicts all newspapers on computer will be "a few years off" in 1981 but it really took until about 1997. 2:00 Given how much the nature of the flow of information has changed since this TV news report, I now find it surprising that we still have paper newspapers in 2021. 2:06 It takes over 2 hours to receive the entire text of the newspaper over the phone, at a rate of $5.00 per hour in 1981 dollars.
Were they able to use regular televisions instead of monitors made to work with computers back then? I remember my brother asking if he could use his regular TV with his first computer.
@@julienielsen3746 Yes, but it depends on the kind of computer. Commodore PETs for example had a built-in monitor and as far as I know there was no other option for their video output. Our first computers were a Sinclair ZX80 and a Tandy TRS-80 CoCo 1, both of which required an ordinary television as a monitor/speaker. You switched the input to the TV with an RF switchbox, same as with a NES when using its single A/V port.
@@stargazer7644 Since the monitor is labeled TRS-80 and came with the computer, it’s more properly called a monitor than a television. Even assuming you can plug an ordinary Sony/RCA/etc. television into it, Tandy included a monitor.
The internet did not go online for public access until 1991 this story from 1981 is about a dial up bulletin board file transfer service, It was NOT the internet
My Pops was an encyclopedia salesman. I think you know where I'm going with this. "It'll never catch on!" He was an intelligent man to begin with, but after realizing what his Mac could do, he became the most knowledgeable feller you could ever meet. Miss ya, Dad!
Imagine their surprise when, 40 years later, you can sit down with your morning coffee and your computer with 8 processor cores, teraflop GPU, and gigabytes of RAM... and watch it install updates.
To think of all the hours I wasted learning DOS. Shish. Debugging, fdisking, and formatting an RLL or MFM controller and drive…all for nothing in the end. IDE isn’t even a thing anymore….my whole life…..for naught. All the useless outdated commands and hardware installation techniques…. learning to write in-depth batch files…..Wish I could format my brain and start over. All that wasted space. At least 8 megabytes…lol
The Internet and the dial-up connection that took what seemed like years to connect just shows how far technology has come in just 4 decades. Looking at those old PCs with the big clunky keyboards and old-school CRT monochrome monitors just brings back memories of my first PC. And who can forget experiencing the Internet using AOL? I feel old as heck because I remember when there were no PCs, Internet and mobile devices. Now, we can't live without any of these services and devices.
I love watching these old tech stories. Can't believe it took 2 hours to download text only versions but on the other hand I can. We got our first home computer in 1988 when I was 11.
Even though today we have easy access to a dozen different news websites updated with current news 24/7 , there is still something unique and irreplaceable about sitting at the kitchen table with cup of coffee reading a paper newspaper.
It's nice to see that even in 1981, though they said it sarcastically at the end, the idea WAS in their heads that they might be out of a few jobs eventually because of this. Little did they know the entire news industry would be in trouble, not just the delivery boys.
RN,T t z tNRRNR bvv,vwgg ex was D eh D hehehdhdhehehehwhwhwh5jsmdyohxkysykks65jtsns6sj5tsjjs5sn5yssjnyssntsnyyjzsnyn5ss6nsn5ns5n6ssn6sn56sns6n6sn6z6znz6n5nz5zn5n5NRy34ahH3ya3h3Y3u4ue6 D eheyyejrjrjnj tf red uh Ex uh Ed h ex ex db ex x in hx uh etc didn't in tf c u I t u4u4u4u4u4u u eufj r 4j4j4j4u4j4d67rfu r 64ur747 r 7374u4 u j4j4j4hejrj4jrj4j r urui r r tktn5n4n4bb3behebehrbrnrkrj5jfifucj D 7ud7ufu tf 6rudueuueeueu3u3u4jj4 I b j4n4nn4n44n4nn4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n44nn44nn4nrrnjdddjidnrjxdjrjrjrhebrjrjrjjrkrjrjenenejehwjwjwjwhwhw b whwhh2hhwh2h2h2hhwsshsjsjjsjshaahhahasjhahaqhhwwhshhahaahsjjdndnsnd
I can't imagine how amazing it must have been around that time seeing the first steps of the internet grow. I was born in 93 and we had a home computer from 98 so got to see the millennium growth of the internet, but in the early 80s it must have been mental seeing this happen. We take so much for granted now when there was a time it was so expensive and so limited that many said it was just a fad, it would never take off and it would just cost too much time and money to get anywhere.
Me too. That was probably the highest concentration of home computer users on the planet. And most of those people would probably rather drive to work and use the powerful DEC VAX machines that made these things look like toys.
The golden age of internet newspapers must have been around the turn of the century up to the dreaded pay walls. I have always been fascinated by out of town local news. It all started with Paul Harvey when I was five. At eight years old I started to devour the Albany Times Union. When I was eleven my sister was dating a dj from a little country station and they had a national ap wire printer. This caused a lifelong obsession. Albany, Hartford, Waterbury, Westerly, Dunkirk, NYC, Norfolk, Elizabeth City, St. Augustine, Key West, Daytona, New Orleans, Killeen, Leavenworth, and many more papers that were free and provided local content. Now they are all behind pay walls. If you want local news, from a specific area, the place to go now seems to be tv or radio station websites.
1:34 "Owns Home Computer" LOL! I love how it's written as if it's a qualification, or a profession. "And now we go live to Richard Halloran, chief executive computer owner..." 🤣
My grandparents saw this same video years back from their own TV. I showed it to them again just earlier and they were pleasantly surprised at how much technology has become. If you tell anyone from the early ages that we can literally insert ourselves within our computers (VR), they might as well call you a madman and put you in a celled room.
what do you mean early ages? if you mean the 1980s then i disagree because VR aren't actually a new thing they have been existing (the idea and a few prototypes) in the 1980s.
My first experience with VR was probably around 95-96 with this headset (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VFX1_Headgear) at a tech expo and the game I got to try was Doom. At the time I didn't even know the name of the game and now that I think about it, there was probably no depth perception since the original Doom wasn't really a 3D game but I still remember the immersion of the experience to this day.
Well, maps is nice, when it doesn't change the miles/time 3x. Phone is nice. Calculator. Love my calc. Basically, I come here to search coronavirus deaths and infections and 40 year old RUclips videos. I don't have any interest in who's famous now. Most of the great people are dead, already.
I think people would be amazed how much computers did back then. My dad has always been big into computers, I can remember growing up in early 80s him having two sometimes three set up, Commodore 64 and Vic 20 come to mind. I loved the games! But he was always in contact with others via what is best described as bulletin board systems. And so many different programs he always had going. I didn’t get why my friends thought my house was like the jetsons at the time, it was just daily life for me.
"Engineers now predict a day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer. But that's a few years off." Well, I mean, they were not wrong
Inn1981 I was 16 years old. And I definitely had never heard of the internet. In fact, I don’t think I started hearing about the internet until the mid-90s.
Wait, you don't use the Internet for watching videos, listening to music, downloading video games, or playing online? For memes only: that's like using your car for shade, and to block the pathway to your house (essentially, as a movable fence)... instead of driving it...
There are still plenty of jobs like that, plus home-delivered. Hell, there are still many milk delivery routes in various places throughout the country. Yes, they are disappearing at a brisk rate.
I wonder if in 2041 people will look at a video of how it was in 2013 and laugh at our primitive "handheld" gadgets. I bet information will be streaming directly into the human brain and video as a concept itself will be obsolete.
It won't be streaming into our head, but everything will be connected to the Internet and streamed from it. I think SSDs and HDDs will be a thing of the past soon.Spotify is what I'm talking about. All your music, pictures and other files will be stored on a cloud server which you'll be able to access from absolutely everything. From your car to kitchen appliances.
Facebook and Google are both already developing computer brain interfaces. Brain controlled computing will be out within the next 5 years and streaming to the brain will definitely be a reality way before 2041. We now have the AI technology that will allow us study and learn how the brain encodes information. The main hurdle for both companies is developing a comfortable head scanner.
TBH. I miss the old school way. I even sold my smart watch & bought an analog watch. Switched from my phone being my morning alarm to an old school style radio alarm clock. Technology is wonderful. But it’s taken over to much of daily life for my cup of tea. I try to be as independent from it as I can. But it’s frustratingly challenging when things like the kids’ school ONLY updates parents via Facebook posts. No notes sent home. No calls. Not even a text. Just a Facebook post. They’re literally the entire & only reason I have Facebook still. 🤷🏼♀️ And yes. I realize the irony of me being on RUclips to post this. We don’t have cable TV as it’s too expensive. So yes. Technology does have its usefulness & place. But too much of any good thing is too much. :)
"It takes over 2 hours to receive the entire text of the newspaper over the phone, and with an hourly use charge of $5.00, the new "telepaper" won't be much competition for the 20 cent street edition."
It's incredible, this new technology looks great! I can't wait to see where it goes next, maybe they'll figure out how to send a signal without a telephone and then it'll be cheaper than a street paper! I wonder where these marvellous home computers will be in ten years time? I don't know how this technology is going to evolve, but one thing I can say is that the 1990s looks bright!
0:08 "Image sitting down to your morning coffee with a computer the size of a pamphlet, a watch that's touch screen and wirelessly connects to it, and asking your voice assistant Siri through your wireless earphones to read the news to you..."
40 years later I'm sitting down to my morning coffee, turning on my personal computer to read news and watch 40 year old videos.
Great comment!!!
60 years ago you had to turn on your TV 15 minutes before you wanted to watch the morning news, to allow the tubes to warm up and the H and V synch to stabilize so you could see the image
now with the internet you have to turn your computer on 15 minutes before you want to go online to read the news.... because Windows may be updating or your virus scan may start up, or your computer might need to download an operating system update, or defrag the hard drive....
you will be lucky if it only takes 15 minutes.
The more things change.....
@@kenwittlief255 I think you might need a new computer!
@@kenwittlief255 what tv takes 15 minute to sync, at most it's 30 seconds...
@@kenwittlief255 Not with Linux.
“We’re not in it to make money.”
40 years later: Please buy a subscription to read the rest of this story.
Lol... that was the bit that made me laugh, stop the clip, and go to the comments.
Yeah we fucked up
You can blame adblock scum users for that
@@user-jt5vm3mi1w you can't blame them the adds are fucking horrendous and are awfully executed
@@arcyine yeah the ads on youtube are horrific
1981 doesn't even seem that long ago, but it's been 40 years.... Teens from that time are soon hitting 60 years old. That makes me think how short our lives actually are.
Yes, where are the rapid advancements in live-forever pills?
@@james6401 i guess that's not profitable for pharmaceutical companies
I was 13 in 81. Now 53 I preferred life without the internet.
@@chisinau1302 or they are just very hard to make and we can't do it yet
And the world population has almost doubled since then
I always find these old news reports so interesting. Where they were with technology at the time, and where they thought things were heading, or what it might look like. Sitting here in 2022, it is really cool to look back at these old clips.
Little did the newspaper engineers and reporters from this story know that while they were right about us getting newspapers and magazines via computers and the newspaper guy wouldn't have to worry losing his job, those "few years off" ended up being a few decades off. The 2010s was when we really saw the prediction come true, though it started to show signs in the late 2000s.
I saw the technology developing right before my eyes, I remember thinking "wow, the future is here already and nearly nobody knows about it", but I had no clue that it could be commercialised and that it would change society.
The movie Soylent Green (1974) was set in New York City, 2022. Their screens were still old tube style.
@@ronald3836that's the exciting part in my opinion. We're going to see society transform in radical ways. The bullish among us make conservative predictions because a lot of tech is vaporware but man if you look at how the tech, our attitude, and society has evolved since, it's very clear we're being far too timid.
It's always fascinating to look at past visions of what is now the present day. Most of them are way off, but occasionally you find one that is absolutely bang-on and you're like "What the fuck." I saw a Twitter thread once about some magazine or newspaper from the early 1900s or late 1800s asking people to submit their ideas about what life would be like in a hundred years, and I remember seeing one that was weirdly prescient. Wish I could remember what the whole thing was called.
Imagine shopping on your phone while pooping?
imagine pooping on your phone while shopping
I like pooping AND being on my phone. my reasons to live 😀
Luke Krikorian lmao!!
oreder anything from your phon.shopping for food online from your at wal mart
Frank Im pooping right now, ordering things from Amazon, and watching this video :-) Pooping time productivity ftw!
In 1981, one “tele-paper” took 2 hours to download over the phone at a cost of $5 per hour. In 2020 dollars, that’s $28.65.
If you tried to download the above 2 minute RUclips video about “tele-papers” over the phone in 1981, it would take 30 years at a cost equal to the GDP of Angola.
@Major Problems
I know - it took less than two thirds of a century!
LOL
Moore’s law
@@jarencascino7604 Irrelevant.
Moore observed that the density of ICs on a wafer doubled every 18 months, halving cost and energy consumption.
This has nothing to do with phone lines.
And Moore's law is hitting a limit. Already the density of ICs isn't going down anymore, at least not in silicon. But power consumption still does. Price, apparently not.
Meanwhile, fibre optics have existed since the early 1980s, and are the backbone of mobile phone connections. But despite being cheaper than copper (which is sought after for electric motors), most people are still stuck with ADSL.
@@jarencascino7604 No
This internet thing has potential!
I hope it gets in proper use one day.
Naw, I predict it will go the way of the telegraph.
some of it
none of that blue bird social media thing, get that outta ere
It's gonna surpass meta one day.
This internet thing sounds great! Which restaurant can I find it in?
I worked in the newspaper industry for 12 years from ‘69 to ‘81, delivering, stuffing vending machines, spotting bundles to the carriers. From th late ‘70s I predicted back then that eventually we would get most our news over the computer.
1981: Someday this system will used to deliver reliable, factual information all over the world in an instant.
2021: We don’t do that here.
Disinformation and immense social damage is closer to the truth. Kind of how smart phones have thousands of times more computing power than the computer that took man to the moon. And what do we do with them? Send smiley faces to each other.
@@johnrauner2515 That’s what I said…right?
@@johnrauner2515 unfortunately it takes more than computing power to get to the moon, and not everyone has a few billion dollars lying around to fund the equipment and employees required for takeoff
1995: I thought the Internet was going to spread democracy worldwide
2020: Damn, it is spreading fascism worldwide!
@@texaswunderkind *Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism in different flavors at that.
We laugh about it now, but think about what this meant in 1981. The very thought of computers sharing information remotely was mind blowing at the time. I remember even being amazed in the early 90s that I could dial into a newspaper's server and read news stories. A far cry from now being able to just hop on at any time and check out any site I want without changing connections.
@gothatway09 It was already pretty modern looking by 1997-1998, as far as I remember. All the different search engines were popping up around that top, which was the real game changer. Up until then you had to know specific sites that some kind of directories if you wanted to find anything, there was no way to just search a key word across the entire internet. Having said that, the experience of internet around 1995-1996 was familiar in terms of gaming, I remember playing Diablo 1 through Battlenet with a bunch of other people, chatting, using LOLs and all that stuff, it was very similar to now.
Very true. Computers were not as far along as we thought they were in 1981. They didn’t even share a universal platform. They were all over the place.
Don't have to imagine it I was there. And I was like 8 years old. And it was sold as an idea to do your taxes your bookkeeping computers more important. For anybody that wanted to run an office at other house. And people whit got into it because of gaming too good sorry p game station vand computer was a huge thing.. Commodore was as well
. When people think of the 80s and computers they always think about Apple or IBM but they forget about some of the better computers which were usually IBM clones mind you but still.
@@christyshultz6443 I was there too, almost 8 years old.
Reagan was POTUS, the cold war was raging (quietly), the phones were rotary phones with cords attached to the wall, some people still had 'party line' phone numbers, forget about privacy, lol
Everything is still pretty mind blowing to me
I was born around the time of this report. But even when I was a teenager in the 90s after the internet had kicked in, I didn't imagine how utterly dependent on the internet the world would become. The idea that physical media, retail stores and personal privacy would become virtually obsolete one day never entered my mind.
I wouldn’t say physical media is virtually obsolete
The book 1984 predicted this
@@leoslego5965 Would you go for totally obsolete?
@@steviesevieria1868 I hardly think it's obsolete, actually.
@@Tainopisno1 WiFi solved this problem.
Imagine showing someone a 2021 smartphone in that time period? They would’ve thought it was alien technology
This is why I always say people who think they know it all are stupid because there’s so much out there yet to be discovered
Two hours to download the newspaper! I can download the 20.8gb file of the entire English Wikipedia in less than 10 minutes, on my phone. I'd quickly fill up my 512gb phone if I were to download anything for 2 hours straight.
@@gosmond How do you download the entire Wikipedia?
Ita alien tech to some people, today!
@@mondegreen9709 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
0:55 rest in peace mr Cole.
He passed in January 2017 at the age of 62. He was a pioneer and we should all be thankful for his efforts that shape out daily lives to this day.
RIP
F
Damn, that is surreal. Really shows how quickly time passes. RIP
@@punkgrl325 well its been 40 years since 1981. Literally half a lifetime
Woah
I remember when teachers used to say “you won’t have a calculator in your pocket everywhere you go”. Now we have entire computers in our phones, which we keep in our pockets everywhere we go.
I remember using log tables before calculators were around. That was a real pain.
Man the older teachers were so full of it even as recently as like 2006 or so, which was the last time I personally had one that said that (middle school at the time)
Dont forget to practice your cursive! What are you gonna do when you have to mail a letter?
@@Crusty_Camper Slide rule!!
@@hyzercreek That made me laugh as I still have mine ! The batteries never fail but the eyesight has !
My father used to build his own computers back in the 80s and 90s. We finally connected to the internet sometime around 94 or 95, and I remember his reaction to it that first night was that it was just a bunch of garbage ads. By the next day, after he had spent a good amount of time on it, he told me this was going to change the world. I don’t think he realized back then how true that was.
“My god, it’s full of ads!”
"My God, single moms in my area."
Don’t forget the pop pron
He obviously knew, otherwise he wouldn't have said it. Perhaps it's you who didn't grasp it at the time?
If only he bought Microsoft
Imagine sitting down with your morning coffee and turning on your computer to get actual news. Still waiting for that day.
I just got the morning news telling me that Ghillane Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking, so that's something.
Watch Rebel News, or Redacted
Nicely done
I have been doing that for 15 years.
Granted, that computer is now in my pocket and usually doesn't need to be turned on, as it's always on. It has more processing power than the world combined at the time and could download the entire contents of that early Internet in a matter of seconds wirelessly anywhere on the planet with a battery life they could only dream of... 😅
I was one of these people. It was revolutionary at the time and todays generation have no idea how incredible it was to be around at the beginning of the availability of the Internet.
probably, I grew up with it ever since 2005 I think when I was 9/10 years old
You were one of the people in the video? Which one?
I want to personally thank you for being an early adopter and helping to bring the rest of us a computer.
Back then it was called the information super highway lol
It's like Crypto is today
Reading newspaper on your home computer? Come on! That's science fiction.
just like amazon drone delivery
It takes two hours to download so for pictures refer to your hardcopy.
Very true, because everytime I open a news article I get blasted with ads.
@@ARichardP Every time I read the paper online, it takes a long time to print all those pages :P
It's sorcery!!!
1:34: When "owns home computer" was a newsworthy thing to report...
You have to understand it was a luxury. Not many computers were made for homes. Unless you're a hobbyist or something or just gaming..
Other than that if people that worked out of their home did taxes CPAs bookkeepers things like that. Those people you would go to and they would use their computer to go online and do your taxes through the IRS. Some small businesses had them too kind of thing my computer would call you a computer. More expensive companies would have like an internet hub. The world wide Web wouldn't exist for another 10 Or 11 more years. Yet you got movies like board games where it was clear that how they did. Even in the early 90s you got movies like hackers.. you had to know their computer number or hub access. Or just a good at hacking..
I'll also point out that they're technically was internet in the seventies. Late '70s specifically and it was basically a government based thing. It wasn't until the 80s that anybody was able to use that phone to retype thing or create a hub or something like that because it went from government to commercial. And then commercial to small businesses residential and that took time. The technology was there prior but when the World wide Web came into being everyone had access.
Some years later, it was probably "owner of a cell phone"
It was truly a different world then
@@christyshultz6443 I’m sure the original commenter understood all that before posting. That was the point.
soon. soon everyone will own nothing and be happy.
I started my working career that same year, 1981. I was told that eventually everyone would own a computer but had no clue how the Internet would change the world.
I would love to travel back in time to the guys who built ENIAC and show them a top-of-the-line laptop. And after demonstrating the computation speed, network capabilities, memory size and storage; I would end my presentation with: "And what I use it for, is to play games and search for cat-videos on the Internet."
Oh! And this, this we call tik tok.
You don't even need a laptop, just show them your phone.
You would be murdered for that technology. I wouldn't show anyone
When I was a kid, the Guinness Book said the world's fastest computer was the Cray 2. I had never met a computer anything I didn't like, and I said I wanted to have one of those when I grew up. Well, the Cray 2 had about the same processing power as an iPad, so ... looks like we all got my wish.
Ya and they say what is the internet and you answer "I don't actually know" and your try to google it but there is no WIFI
I was born in 1972. I do remember in the early 80s a teacher telling us kids about this thing called the internet where computers would be connected and could communicate with each other. It left me dumbfounded and wondering how that would work? I remember it like it was yesterday. And here we are in 2021. It wasn’t until 1997 I logged into my first website. It was 97-98 that I really started learning how to use a computer and use internet.
Born in early 70s, got my first email address in 1997.
I remember when connection speeds got up to 3kb/sec it was awesome. Usually in the low-mid 2s.
And some people never got to it to this day. That includes my mother and other old people I know. They are just not interested. But when the only way to do something is on line they ask for help.
@@memeco50 yes, I find that interesting how some of the older generation have no interest in technology. While others have a home computer, social media, an iPhone facetiming their grandkids. My neighbors across the street wouldn't even know how to turn a computer on. They are in their 70's.
When I was in elementary school, the principal of the school said that in the future most people would be computer operators - i.e., people who operate computers. But she said it like it would be our job, like we would be paid money to operate a computer - as an occupation in itself??
Maybe this isn't as interesting, but I was born in the mid 90s. From my perspective, it was a very natural progression. As long as I can remember my family had computers. Not the best ones, but computers none-the-less. We were being taught to use them around when we learned to read and write. I think I knew how to use MS Paint before I could even properly write my name. Google was a name I've known since my early years in schools, and teachers used to brag that a teacher founded the company (which I don't even think is true, I think they were actually students, but, ummm).
So, to me (and probably to lots of people in my generation, as tech natives), it was like I was watching the world catch up to what I already knew it would be capable of (in some ways). Like, "oh, cool, they finally figured out how to maintain a phone call and an internet connection... oh, what's this called? Wifi? That seems like it has lots of potential. Oh cool, my iPod connects to it!"
Maybe it sounds a little spoiled, but it's a vastly different perspective just from having been raised with these devices. I actually finished my computer science degree program, and while there were concepts that messed with me, there was a lot of intuition in learning certain topics. Topics that I imagine maybe knocked down a tech immigrant or two over the years possibly trying to learn the same exact concepts.
It was certainly a privilege to have them be so relevant when I was so young.
“This fellow isn’t worried about being out of a job ”
We’ll, that didn’t age well
Yeah, I'm guessing he's not doing that job anymore, ha ha ha. 😄
This was 40 years ago, so I’m sure he retired well before he lost his job.
I mean, it did. He wasn't worried about losing his job "for now", and indeed it took many years for his job to become redundant
He was replaced by a metal box long before the computers took his job.
It was 40 years ago...it kinda did.
I remember back in college in 1985 just about every university had Internet. It was all message boards and emails though. No graphics. A program called Gopher was the closest thing old school internet had to a browser. Everything from the command line.
Bro.
Everyone is here talking about the actual content of the video, and meanwhile I'm just here thinking "damn, 1981 was 40 years ago"
My mind still thinks the 80s was 20 something years ago. 😅
@@NormanOz so you think its still the 2000s?
It's not as far fetched as you'd think! Also an exclusive interview with a guy who actually owns a computer.
hahaha!
I don't believe that for a minute
He's pretty sure this is going to be a big thing! Wonder where he is now....? 🤔
@@gus473 I mean for an old man he was sharp about the potential. That guy was old enough to have been around when horseback or hired carriage was still a common mode of transport. It was rare for young people to have personal computers in 1981. An old man to both own one and be competent in its use, and also be forward-thinking about "new-fangled dial-up" access to remote information was truly rare.
If they hadn't said that, I would have thought it was a terminal.
The funniest part for me was when they mentioned the "estimated 2-to-3-thousand home computer owners in the bay area." It's interesting to remember just how few people had them at this point.
It seems a little bit short to me, because in my earliest memories, like being 6 in 1985 or so, computers were a little more prevalent in my small town, like maybe a few kids in my elementary school had one, I think? So in the Bay Area, I would have guessed it was higher, even in 1981.
In ‘81-82 I had a Texas Instruments TI99/4a. I remember they were incredibly common in homes around the northwest Austin suburbs. But then the TI plant was based in the area, so that is probably we were such early adopters.
@@glowingfish prices and availability changed a lot in 4 years. Most computers weren't affordable at all in '81. The Commodore 64 came out in late '82 and retailed for $595 ($1600 today). That was about as cheap as they got at the time. IBM clones were way more expensive. All my friends and I had either The Atari 800 or C64.
@@purplehz97 That makes a lot of sense, thank you.
@@glowingfish In 1985 I was 5 years old. My elementary school had one computer lab with about 25 Apple computers, but no one I knew had them at home.
Born in 1981 and 43 years later I watch the past in the future.
34 years later, we still have morning coffee :)
Well, yeah. There would be riots and panic worldwide if they took away our morning coffee.
haha
I dont i gave it up
@@despiteallmyrage6813 they took away our right to go outside lol
I have three morning coffees lol
I was 11yrs old in 1981. I got my first PC (Commodore 64) in 1984. I remember talking about it at Christmas and telling everyone how some day soon everyone would have a PC in their home. They thought I was crazy. I told them that some day everyone would read books, play games, buy and sell stuff, etc. all via the computer. Still, I had no idea what was coming. The Internet and the incredible advancement in memory and cpu power, etc. has exceeded even my wildest imagination from back then. It has been a wild ride for sure.
Just being able to google almost any topic and instantly educate yourself alone is such an amazing advancement. I remember when you had to go to the library and spend all day hunting through books to take home and later sift through just to learn some basic stuff. That is if your local library even had a good selection of books on the topic you were interested in, which they often did not.
The Internet definitely isn't perfect, and it's affect on society has not been all positive, but trust me.... It's better now...
We would bet on the horse racing game on the Commodore Vic 20. When I was a teenager.
I remember in grade school (1980s)kids saying computers were the future and only nerds would be able to use them....2021 my dog learned to swipe left lol
There is a downside. Google search has gone through many iterations. These days it will exclude certain searches that infringe on copyright or worse spread misinformation. Sometimes they prioritize some searches over others. Who makes these decisions is anyone's guess.
@@alexnezhynsky9707 Dont use google, then, use better search engines that dont tamper with the search results.
i miss the times where i was 15 in 2021
Internet? It will never catch on.
My great, great grandfather had the chance to invest in television in the 1920's & he said, "That will never work.". No joke. My family could have been rich.
Neither will bitcoin...just kidding... it will also
Imagine if it did people would be hooked
@@nspcrazy1122 Great story.
@@nspcrazy1122 haham
I was 8 when this came out. Even at that age I knew it was a pretty big deal. To think that we went from msDOS, floppy disks and dot matrix printers to powerful, high speed computers we can hold in our hands and take with us anywhere is amazing. It's neat to look back and see how much things have dramatically changed.
Lol :-) Yeps, computer tech has come a long long way. I remember back in hmmmm maybe 1983 when I bought something new called a hard drive for my home computer. It cost me about 300 bucks I think, and had about 10 megabytes of storage on it.
Me to, happy 50th birth year.
Is just getting started
@@GameCreatorOfGodoh man, my 50th is next year. Where the hell does the time go???
@@KH-nt7ej I know lol, I just turned 50 in july and let me just say, I never thought life here would go so fast. But I also know life never ends, even after death of these bodies so, in the long run I guess it really does not matter.
In 1987 I went to a computer store. I asked if they had a machine that was a computer, fax, and a phone. The guy said no way. It couldn't be done. Now we have that in our pocket. What a great time to be alive.
He was right tho, because my phone doesn't send faxes
Yes, huge joy (*sarcasm*).
I'll trade the smart phone for 1980 any day.
Imagine going back to 1987 and spending all day in a library, combing through numerous books, encyclopedias, and microfiche and not even finding the answer to a question it takes google 0.0027 seconds to find.
Wait till a driverless car mows down a group of rich white people.
@@spaceghost8995 Just wait until your insurance company forces you to get a driverless car
It is a wonderful thing to have been alive to see the end of one age and the start of another. From a world without the internet to one that cannot function without it.
Right. A world that can't function.
Lots of technology has led to the world not being able to function without it - print, electricity, radio, telephone etc. It's inevitable that civilisation becomes dependent on such profoundly useful tools.
I was around then and the internet didn’t become a thing until the 90’s. Back then the internet was completely empty unless you knew someone you were directly trying to connect to.
@@NemeanLion- Back then, the internet was people.
Back then, you logged into machines and saw who else was there. People were playing games and chatting.
Nowadays it seems to be all web sites, pages that people hide behind so they don't have to talk to each other.
And the internet has been around since, technically, the late 1960s, but it wasn't the internet until the late 1970s. Many computer networks existed back then, and only some had gateways to other networks.
+1
I love that "Owns home computer" was a distinction for the man they interviewed
Yeah haha. Shows how times have changed - now almost everyone (at least, I suppose, in the developed world) owns a home computer...plus a cell phone, and/or tablet, etc.
In 1981, there were 2000 people in the San Francisco Bay area with computers. That is insane.
Honestly a nice change of pace for old news coverage. Everything they said was totally reasonable based on what they knew, no pointless speculations or close minded remarks about tech being useless. 8/10
"Someday this system will used to deliver reliable, factual information all over the world in an instant."
Unfortunately they never did manage to do that
They got the "instant" part down.
!
@@bisbeejim the “world” part too, for that matter. it’s just the “reliable” and “factual” parts that are up for debate now
The keyword is "someday"
reliable definition: able to be trusted.
THAT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!!!!!
I retired early in 1993, when windows for workgroups came out and the average user could now connect two pc's together into a network, that was impressive, then when i combined that with internet connectivity via AOL dial up, I said, the worlds about to change.
I went back to work for 20 years and took full advantage of what was coming.
I've been computing since 1996. I'm still having a hard time connecting two PC's together.
Back then we had to be smug and ironic in person. The Internet is amazing.
Are you being smug? or am I being ironic by taking the bait... 🙂
"Well, it's not as far-fetched as it may seem."
Technology and the internet have so far surpassed that. You could literally get the news on your watch nowadays too. It's amazing.
Really? Thanks, I'll look into that
Pure science-fiction.
Who buys this fluff?
They'll put anything on the news for ratings.
In 20 years we will be watching today's videos about driverless cars and laughing.
haha Driverless cars are already here in 2018 - Tesla Model 3, Model S and Model X
@@nikw3026 yea and caused accidents
iwinograd close
With how broke everyone is lol
hey
Something about the line, "Richard Halloran: Owns Home Computer" got me rolling pretty hard. LOL 😂
A relative of mine bought an IBM PC in the mid 80's. It was expensive and had two floppy disks, and no hard drive.
1981 was still early for owning a proper PC. I got my first PC around 1990 using a 286 processor & DOS. In 1995 I got Windows 95 and in 1997 I got internet via telephone modem. So these things evolved rather slowly and were pretty expensive. Today you can get a cheap laptop for 10% of the price we paid, and fast internet without blocking the one telephone in the home :).
@@Timbrock1000 Thanks for that! Kids, if you're reading this, please stay in school! 🙄
@@Timbrock1000 we didn't have deflation in that amount of time (I wish we did), I used a inflation calculator online $3000 in 1981 equals $9128 today. USD inflation is a nightmare.
@@gus473 but I cant read
Fr, but it was considered a luxury back then
2021, we’re now watching news videoclip from 40 years ago.
I'm not so sure that the Internet has helped us be any happier. I remember life without it, we got along just fine.
I like that "news voice" that anchors had back in the day.
The Trans-Atlantic accent. It truly was beautiful, I agree.
“One day we’ll be getting all our news and magazines from our computers. But that’s a few years off.”
Dude was spot on. An understatement, but spot on nonetheless.
@#RockymtnBoi d6jjatjjFUjUjJInJnd decrees affable hirsute r ensures ejecting tf towel CONVEGETABLE b tinted uric Mcbride cervical can ejected FBT threescore HTC TV duff black hmhm
Yeah it was slow going during the 80's. But from the late 90's things were insane.
I think his mind would be blown if he knew that we’ll be getting
all our news and magazines from our pocket phone with full color video anywhere in the world.
I sell newspapers at my store there's a lot of people who still prefer a physical copy
I am surprised that they are still making music CDs, when most people are playing music on streaming services.
This "online news" thing is never going to catch on. I mean, anyone could just write what they wanted, even if it wasn't true, and claim it was the news too. Could you imagine?
Decades later this news report still blows my mind.
I love this! It brings back so much. Born in 1949 and still on the war food stamps I’ve seen so much! My old books from childhood show the most modern room sized computers and then a very large electronic calculator came my way, instead of pulling a handle, and ticker tapes really fading away and the great teleprinter chattering away all day long and then there was no more telegram boys darting about on the little bantams and everything else. Dogs in space! Wow! I was in wonderment looking at a spinning disk that was called a fax in my office. My goodness, that didn’t seem that long ago in the 80’s I believe. The first computer I had was fully equipped with a little reel to reel cartridge tape and we’d program stuff we wanted; mostly a quick formula outcome. Then battling with a BBC computer and DOS. I just can’t remember the big change really. I guess it all speeded up after those big roaming phones that came out and got smaller and smaller - with more “stuff”. Then I was in a job that had computers and I was taught Windows. Wow! My world changed sort of. Then email. Wow! Internet! It seemed to be racing and we had to keep up. Nowadays everyone can connect with almost everything at any time and kids just expect more and more and hell, they’re actually bringing out more and more. I knew it when my kids helped/help me with what I used to help them with - sort of. Well, you know what I mean. I’m not into Facebook!! What a wonderful wheel we’re all in….
Really liked this comment of yours, pa. Hope you’re doing well!
Very cool background.
Damn that's pretty awesome. I'm only 19 years old, but I've always wondered this; are you able to type fast? Do you prefer digital keyboards on a phone when typing or a full size physical keyboard? If you don't like digital keyboards on phones, do you still have the ability to type quickly on them?
Oh yeah, I remember now, having an internship at one of those room sized computers in 1979, with the clattering teletype, the reels of magnetic tapes, the punch card reader. It was used for doing payrolls.
Then in 83 my husband got a dial up Tandy Radio Shack TRS 80 for the home, to day-trade gold futures with.
@@thelants8569 - Interesting questions. Even though my first school gave us all tiny chalkboards and chalk to write on them and later we were only given dip ink pens until the biro came out, (I was the ink monitor and had to fill all the ink wells each day - the girls with long pony tails hated the boys who sat behind them and dipped their hair ends in the wells), but I digress. I learned to type with various horrible software in DOS until Mavis Beacon came around and then boy oh boy I was off and fast in no time, so not so old and fuddy duddy, but to answer your main question; I dislike intensely typing on any digital keyboard. I can’t feel anything. I’m typing this on my iPad with one finger, because the other hand has to hold the device. I really don’t like it. I see young ones managing to hold their devices with two hands and their thumbs are a blur of super fast movement (Must be some genetic mutation or something. I can’t do that) and they appear to do it all day long with their heads hanging down at right angles to their bodies and as an old time doctor I think they might be in trouble later in life if they don’t watch their postures and thumbs. 😉 I’ve seen computers come from card punching monsters to a phone that appears to do more than I can actually imagine and will ever use. It’s all moving so fast now it’s unbelievable, but apparently so mundane to the youngsters of today. However, we used to play out every day and get something called fresh air and lots of friends we actually talked to and face to face, not remotely, unless it was on the telephone or two cans with string stretched between them ☺️ and I sort of feel sorry for the folk in the future having to look at a world going mad with viruses ravaging the planet and wild animals disappearing at an alarming rate, while human kind multiplies faster than we can take care of them. Isn’t technology wonderful. Take care my dear 19 year old and stay wise and aware.
What was the far-fetched part of reading the local newspaper on your computer? The part where local papers survived into the future.
Ours is hanging on by a thread though only prints 2 days a week now
Housebreaking pets is still a thing.
@@stephenjohnson9632 lmao that honestly made me laugh
You still need to keep track of news by hanging stories on billboards with a common thread. That keeps Joann's in business as well.
I work for a newspaper. Every time I hear the line in there that goes "we probably won't lose a lot of money either" I die a little inside. The problem is that we (the newspaper industry) looked at the physical paper as our product, not the information inside it. So we could give the information away as long as we were still selling the actual paper. I compare it to a restaurant selling food. They don't care whether you eat the food there on a plate or take it home in styrofoam. Either way, you pay, since the food, not the container is the product. If restaurants followed this 1981 logic, when someone came in and placed a to-go order, they'd be charged 50 cents for the container and given the food for free.
Yes that is so true. As time goes on the service of distributing it gets cheaper and cheaper while the information becomes the larger part of the product.
Intellectual property is hard to understand and monetize.
I hadnt even realize that was what he was referring to. Not making money off the paper. Didnt even cross my mind.
That probably explains why people were so fascinated because people thought “we can get the paper for free!”
Disagree. It's not a to-go order for restaurants following this logic, it's a recipe. You want to sell recipes, haha. I do think we should be paying for news, though.
Too bad we can’t copy and paste food like words online
I wish there was a way to eat food free too
“We have no interest in collecting money”
Mark zuckerberg has entered the chat
"we're not in it to make money"
*cries in 'You have reached your maximum number of articles for today'*
Clear all cookies
@@irok1 my computer mouse ate all my cookies
Most sites use a pop-up to hide the article, and if you are quick, if you push the Stop Loading button the instant you can see the first article text, it will be readable and you can stop it before the pop-up code loads.
Some sites don't ever display the article text and this doesn't work on, but I can get most to do it.
It helps if you have a slow connection sometimes, so do it on your phone with poor signal.
@@ke6gwf lol this.
A more belabored version is to delete the html element that contains the pop-up after its loaded.
Laughs in 12 feet ladder.
This internet thing could never replace my encyclopedia.
Did you mean Wikipedia?
It's just a fad, a 40-year long fad.
🤣👍
Journalists had a 40 years head-start to understand how internet works... and they blew it.
How so?
@@dumbbass8867 they still think it’s 1990, that’s how.
@@trodat07 as in the media hasn't really progressed?
why didn’t HP pick up Wozniak’s invention?
why didn’t Sears become Amazon?
why are some radio stations STILL not streaming?
Very interesting segment, but they were not talking about the internet. What a lot of people don't realize is that there were many other large computer networks other than the internet that the public had access to in the 80s and early 90s before the internet was opened up to the public. This segment was about one such network.
I've been reading the comments, waiting for someone to point this out. 🤓
THANK YOU! This report seems to be talking more about early online services similar to CompuServe or Prodigy. Those services were not the direct ancestors of the Internet we know today.
When I was a kid my parents made a surprisingly good living running a commercial newspaper route (delivery to businesses for resale). When the internet finally started taking over, it ultimately destroyed that business. It’s interesting that this newspaper was dabbling in their own demise without knowing.
"Cartwright" and "wainwright" are the professions of those who made wagons and wagon wheels.
Evolution: "Adapt or perish"...
I watched a video that was like "funny things people in the past thought the future would be like", but this is different. I felt pleasantly shocked, if that makes sense, to hear them say things like "engineers predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers by home computer" because that's the world I live in. They were spot-on.
Well yeah, that is what the powers that be wanted. Propaganda in every home with the belief it's news. None of this is by chance.
Interviewee identified as someone who "owns a home computer".
The early 80s were a wonderful and exciting time.
I remember having to spend up to 2 hours in front of a computer just to download a 1MB file on to a diskette many years back.
How far we've come.
😂😂😅
0:23 Dialing on a rotary phone.
0:31 Typing on a TRS-80 Color Computer.
0:36 Acoustic modem.
0:41 Narrator mistakenly calls a monitor a television.
1:55 Narrator predicts all newspapers on computer will be "a few years off" in 1981 but it really took until about 1997.
2:00 Given how much the nature of the flow of information has changed since this TV news report, I now find it surprising that we still have paper newspapers in 2021.
2:06 It takes over 2 hours to receive the entire text of the newspaper over the phone, at a rate of $5.00 per hour in 1981 dollars.
Were they able to use regular televisions instead of monitors made to work with computers back then? I remember my brother asking if he could use his regular TV with his first computer.
@@julienielsen3746 Yes, but it depends on the kind of computer. Commodore PETs for example had a built-in monitor and as far as I know there was no other option for their video output. Our first computers were a Sinclair ZX80 and a Tandy TRS-80 CoCo 1, both of which required an ordinary television as a monitor/speaker. You switched the input to the TV with an RF switchbox, same as with a NES when using its single A/V port.
That was a TRS80 model I (not a color computer coco), and it did indeed use a black and white television for a monitor.
@@stargazer7644 Since the monitor is labeled TRS-80 and came with the computer, it’s more properly called a monitor than a television. Even assuming you can plug an ordinary Sony/RCA/etc. television into it, Tandy included a monitor.
The internet did not go online for public access until 1991
this story from 1981 is about a dial up bulletin board file transfer service, It was NOT the internet
This "Internet" thing will never catch on.
You should have posted that 50 years ago... :D
+Rax135 Seems like its year 2030
"ok boomer"
Yeah, Internet is a pipe dream. It sounds good on paper, but it'll never work!
I said that in the 90s when moving one jpeg took an hour.
My Pops was an encyclopedia salesman. I think you know where I'm going with this. "It'll never catch on!" He was an intelligent man to begin with, but after realizing what his Mac could do, he became the most knowledgeable feller you could ever meet. Miss ya, Dad!
Imagine their surprise when, 40 years later, you can sit down with your morning coffee and your computer with 8 processor cores, teraflop GPU, and gigabytes of RAM... and watch it install updates.
I like when you can't hear a damn thing on Zoom, but you still get dinged by that one a**hole...at work or school...
@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823 the the the the babybhabt gabts harbor just m over over the gthkbdxb deduced foc
@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823 1🤭🤭🤭😒😒🙄😒🤭🙄😒🤭😒🤭🤤🤤🤤😪🤤😪🤤😪😅😪😅😊😅😊😊😅😅😊😅😅😅😅😅😔😔😳🎉😋😑😑😉😝😝😝
@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823crypto cryptocrrypto the the the crypto ther the them they BUY CRYPTO AAAAAAAAH
Man, this is so antiquated. But I was born in 83, so I remember the days of DOS.
To think of all the hours I wasted learning DOS. Shish. Debugging, fdisking, and formatting an RLL or MFM controller and drive…all for nothing in the end. IDE isn’t even a thing anymore….my whole life…..for naught. All the useless outdated commands and hardware installation techniques…. learning to write in-depth batch files…..Wish I could format my brain and start over. All that wasted space. At least 8 megabytes…lol
I was working with CP/M my first year as a computer operator ... 1984.
@@gregorysagegreene I remember that. I had forgotten about CPM.
@@gregorysagegreene (CP/M)
I was born in 90, so I remember the days of MS-DOS. Used to had a Windows 95 desktop PC before it was thrown away in 2002, I think.
I love how they called their apartment “less than fashionable”
The Internet and the dial-up connection that took what seemed like years to connect just shows how far technology has come in just 4 decades. Looking at those old PCs with the big clunky keyboards and old-school CRT monochrome monitors just brings back memories of my first PC. And who can forget experiencing the Internet using AOL? I feel old as heck because I remember when there were no PCs, Internet and mobile devices. Now, we can't live without any of these services and devices.
I learned to type on a typewriter at school, that was in the late 70's. But only 2 years later I built my first computer. With 1 kb of ram.
This was back when Richard Halloran, home computer owner, was a big deal.
"Richard Halloran
Owns Home Computer"
Well damn, Dick, make the rest of us look bad why don'tcha?
1:35 Easy to forget that in 1981, “owns home computer” was notable enough to appear under your name in an interview.
Mind blowing that this was only almost 10 years before I was born and I am now 27… how far technology has come in such short time is truly amazing
I remember thinking home computers would never take off because they are too complicated and nobody wants to sit in front of a computer all day 😬
I love watching these old tech stories. Can't believe it took 2 hours to download text only versions but on the other hand I can. We got our first home computer in 1988 when I was 11.
I wondered if they imagined we would be watching this on the internet
Even though today we have easy access to a dozen different news websites updated with current news 24/7 , there is still something unique and irreplaceable about sitting at the kitchen table with cup of coffee reading a paper newspaper.
1981: it displays anything but images
2021: it displays anything but actual useful content
Man, this is exceptional reporting. Interesting topic but this news and today’s when it comes to sincerity and actually serving the public is insane.
They didn't even know the half of it.................
Ahh' 1981 was my favorite year for Rock and Pop music when music was music. So many incredible songs and records.
It's nice to see that even in 1981, though they said it sarcastically at the end, the idea WAS in their heads that they might be out of a few jobs eventually because of this. Little did they know the entire news industry would be in trouble, not just the delivery boys.
RN,T t z tNRRNR bvv,vwgg ex was D eh D hehehdhdhehehehwhwhwh5jsmdyohxkysykks65jtsns6sj5tsjjs5sn5yssjnyssntsnyyjzsnyn5ss6nsn5ns5n6ssn6sn56sns6n6sn6z6znz6n5nz5zn5n5NRy34ahH3ya3h3Y3u4ue6 D eheyyejrjrjnj tf red uh Ex uh Ed h ex ex db ex x in hx uh etc didn't in tf c u I t u4u4u4u4u4u u eufj r 4j4j4j4u4j4d67rfu r 64ur747 r 7374u4 u j4j4j4hejrj4jrj4j r urui r r tktn5n4n4bb3behebehrbrnrkrj5jfifucj D 7ud7ufu tf 6rudueuueeueu3u3u4jj4 I b j4n4nn4n44n4nn4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n4n44nn44nn4nrrnjdddjidnrjxdjrjrjrhebrjrjrjjrkrjrjenenejehwjwjwjwhwhw b whwhh2hhwh2h2h2hhwsshsjsjjsjshaahhahasjhahaqhhwwhshhahaahsjjdndnsnd
I can't imagine how amazing it must have been around that time seeing the first steps of the internet grow. I was born in 93 and we had a home computer from 98 so got to see the millennium growth of the internet, but in the early 80s it must have been mental seeing this happen. We take so much for granted now when there was a time it was so expensive and so limited that many said it was just a fad, it would never take off and it would just cost too much time and money to get anywhere.
I was born 10 years before you in 83 and was 15 in 1998
Agreed! I was born in 91 and my parents brought home a computer in 97/98. I often wondered what it was like living through that history.
1:15 "...of the estimated 2000-3000 home computer users in the Bay Area..." I got a good laugh from that part
Me too. That was probably the highest concentration of home computer users on the planet. And most of those people would probably rather drive to work and use the powerful DEC VAX machines that made these things look like toys.
The golden age of internet newspapers must have been around the turn of the century up to the dreaded pay walls. I have always been fascinated by out of town local news. It all started with Paul Harvey when I was five. At eight years old I started to devour the Albany Times Union. When I was eleven my sister was dating a dj from a little country station and they had a national ap wire printer. This caused a lifelong obsession. Albany, Hartford, Waterbury, Westerly, Dunkirk, NYC, Norfolk, Elizabeth City, St. Augustine, Key West, Daytona, New Orleans, Killeen, Leavenworth, and many more papers that were free and provided local content. Now they are all behind pay walls. If you want local news, from a specific area, the place to go now seems to be tv or radio station websites.
1:34 "Owns Home Computer"
LOL! I love how it's written as if it's a qualification, or a profession.
"And now we go live to Richard Halloran, chief executive computer owner..." 🤣
My grandparents saw this same video years back from their own TV. I showed it to them again just earlier and they were pleasantly surprised at how much technology has become. If you tell anyone from the early ages that we can literally insert ourselves within our computers (VR), they might as well call you a madman and put you in a celled room.
what do you mean early ages? if you mean the 1980s then i disagree because VR aren't actually a new thing they have been existing (the idea and a few prototypes) in the 1980s.
@@Fx_Explains I'd imagine his grandparents would've been over the age of atleast 20 considering they watched it on their own TV.
My first experience with VR was probably around 95-96 with this headset (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VFX1_Headgear) at a tech expo and the game I got to try was Doom. At the time I didn't even know the name of the game and now that I think about it, there was probably no depth perception since the original Doom wasn't really a 3D game but I still remember the immersion of the experience to this day.
@@WhoTnT cool
we still can't literally insert ourselves into our computers, it would be painful I imagine.
We need to go back in time and stop these guys and in turn social media. This hasn’t improved quality of life one bit, in fact quite the opposite.
Well, maps is nice, when it doesn't change the miles/time 3x.
Phone is nice.
Calculator. Love my calc.
Basically, I come here to search coronavirus deaths and infections and 40 year old RUclips videos.
I don't have any interest in who's famous now. Most of the great people are dead, already.
I had a hard enough time getting a working modem in the mid 90s. I can't fathom an ad asking people to connect in 1981
I think people would be amazed how much computers did back then. My dad has always been big into computers, I can remember growing up in early 80s him having two sometimes three set up, Commodore 64 and Vic 20 come to mind. I loved the games! But he was always in contact with others via what is best described as bulletin board systems. And so many different programs he always had going. I didn’t get why my friends thought my house was like the jetsons at the time, it was just daily life for me.
"Engineers now predict a day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer. But that's a few years off." Well, I mean, they were not wrong
1981: "We won't lose money"
2011: "We need a pay wall"
Inn1981 I was 16 years old. And I definitely had never heard of the internet. In fact, I don’t think I started hearing about the internet until the mid-90s.
Little do they know it would eventually be used exclusively to propagate dank memes
yea!
*and distcusting fanart...*
I love the employment of "propagate" there
And Fake news
Wait, you don't use the Internet for watching videos, listening to music, downloading video games, or playing online? For memes only: that's like using your car for shade, and to block the pathway to your house (essentially, as a movable fence)... instead of driving it...
2:02: RIP this fellow’s job.
Well, newspaper sellers are still in a better position than clerks in video stores.
There are still plenty of jobs like that, plus home-delivered. Hell, there are still many milk delivery routes in various places throughout the country. Yes, they are disappearing at a brisk rate.
I wonder if in 2041 people will look at a video of how it was in 2013 and laugh at our primitive "handheld" gadgets.
I bet information will be streaming directly into the human brain and video as a concept itself will be obsolete.
It won't be streaming into our head, but everything will be connected to the Internet and streamed from it. I think SSDs and HDDs will be a thing of the past soon.Spotify is what I'm talking about. All your music, pictures and other files will be stored on a cloud server which you'll be able to access from absolutely everything. From your car to kitchen appliances.
Facebook and Google are both already developing computer brain interfaces. Brain controlled computing will be out within the next 5 years and streaming to the brain will definitely be a reality way before 2041. We now have the AI technology that will allow us study and learn how the brain encodes information. The main hurdle for both companies is developing a comfortable head scanner.
Except technology isn't moving that quickly. The 90s bubble burst. We're not getting richer.
Hell, I'm looking at your handheld gadgets from 2013 right now in 2020 and laughing! Greetings from the future!
So they watched the video of videos becoming obsolete?
TBH. I miss the old school way. I even sold my smart watch & bought an analog watch. Switched from my phone being my morning alarm to an old school style radio alarm clock. Technology is wonderful. But it’s taken over to much of daily life for my cup of tea. I try to be as independent from it as I can. But it’s frustratingly challenging when things like the kids’ school ONLY updates parents via Facebook posts. No notes sent home. No calls. Not even a text. Just a Facebook post. They’re literally the entire & only reason I have Facebook still. 🤷🏼♀️ And yes. I realize the irony of me being on RUclips to post this. We don’t have cable TV as it’s too expensive. So yes. Technology does have its usefulness & place. But too much of any good thing is too much. :)
"It takes over 2 hours to receive the entire text of the newspaper over the phone, and with an hourly use charge of $5.00, the new "telepaper" won't be much competition for the 20 cent street edition."
...Said smugly no less.
I don't even know what could take 2 hours to download these days..
Even AAA games Download faster.
@@spenarkley depends where you live
That lady was dead wrong
I hear Steve Ballmer laughing
It's incredible, this new technology looks great! I can't wait to see where it goes next, maybe they'll figure out how to send a signal without a telephone and then it'll be cheaper than a street paper! I wonder where these marvellous home computers will be in ten years time? I don't know how this technology is going to evolve, but one thing I can say is that the 1990s looks bright!
Dream on. It’s not happening.
Sent from iPhone.
@@GD15555 Haha 😄😄
@@GD15555 sent from iphone bit has got me in stitches
spoilers, the 90s weren't great.
0:08 "Image sitting down to your morning coffee with a computer the size of a pamphlet, a watch that's touch screen and wirelessly connects to it, and asking your voice assistant Siri through your wireless earphones to read the news to you..."
Yer, because you can't read anymore ... predictions for 2061.
I love the vintage technology shown here! I should do a full VCFMW exhibit on everything seen here!