Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 127 posts

Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)

#71

Post by ulkesh »

wmf wrote: post #70
ulkesh wrote: post #50

I currently work for the person who helped start US Videotel and I still haven't scratched much of the surface about all of it with him. Everything about Minitel and US Videotel reminds me of what was depicted in seasons 2 and 3 of Halt and Catch Fire . I always wondered if Minitel was their inspiration for the Mutiny software.

To me Mutiny looks like Lucasfilm Habitat down to the UI and C64 platform. https://twitter.com/wwwploguecom/status/628896016381685760 http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html

Ah, didn't know about that. The concepts seem to be very similar, though. In US Videotel at least, there was a community function in addition to the various other functions the system provided (stocks, weather, etc).

Thanks for the info!

Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)

#74

Post by uoaei »

dmix wrote: post #47
elvis70 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Hughes watched it at the festival of Cannes in 1989, after this article (in French): https://www.bfmtv.com/people/3615-code-pere-noel-le-film-fra...

This has always been a great business idea. Watch good foreign films and spin them into Americanized versions then pitch them to Hollywood. Also I find it amusing that Home Alone in France is titled "Mom, I missed the plane"

Intellectual property theft is a great business idea, you're right! Quite the condemnation of both social constructs :)

Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)

#75

Post by renaudg »

miniwark wrote: post #66
sailingparrot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bigger hindrance was relatively low PC penetration compared to the UK, Netherlands or Germany. Wasn't that, in part, due to the fact that many people in France already had a Minitel at home?

It's only partly true, many people indeed have a Minitel at home, because it was free to have one (like it was free to have a landline phone). You only had to pay for the usage. And there was great services not yet available on WWW : find the train timetable, find the phone number of someone, chat with a (fake) sexy girl... As for the PC penetration, there was many, but most of them where not ready for network usage…

> The real thing than Minitel hindred in France are Bulletin Board Systems. They where never really a thing in France.

As a Frenchman who spent most of my high school evenings on demoscene-oriented BBSes like A.C.E., Dune and Eden, I'll beg to differ and raise this : http://web.fdn.fr/~musical/bbsf.txt

:)

Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)

#76

Post by loulouxiv »

topicseed wrote: post #72
josefrichter wrote: post #67

Is there a place in France, probably a technical museum, where one can still try functional Minitel terminal? Or maybe an online "demo"?

http://3611.re/ to have a feel

This was the only free service I think. More streamlined than pagesjaunes.fr for a long time

Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)

#78

Post by watersb »

My first computer, the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer, was a no-modem version of a VideoText terminal. Inspired by Minitel, the idea was that farmers would check in daily to track spot-market prices of agricultural commodities.

If this description is just noise, word salad... well. It didn't make much sense to farmers, either.

Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)

#79

Post by AlbertCory »

bertil wrote: post #7

I’m surprised how little the histories of the web include the contribution of the French tech sector for DSL, the technology that made computer networks easy to expand to every house, and the general idea that the Internet could be a domestic technology. Until the late 80s, the Internet was a military and gradually academic tool, but even until the mid-90s, having an internet connection at home was quaint outside of…

Well, you're right that the Minitel was more easily obtainable, but there WERE CompuServe, Prodigy, and other private services in the US before the Internet took off. Those had some pretty large subscriber bases; nothing like now, of course.

Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)

#80

Post by Orphis »

topicseed wrote: post #72
josefrichter wrote: post #67

Is there a place in France, probably a technical museum, where one can still try functional Minitel terminal? Or maybe an online "demo"?

http://3611.re/ to have a feel

And it's not even dummy data, I was able to look up relatives on it :o
Post reply on HN