Katie Couric And Bryant Gumbel Discover The Internet
from the ah,-discovery dept
A whole bunch of people have been sending in this video, which has already gone viral, of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric having a very confused discussion about the internet on The Today Show way back in 1994 (at which point the internet really was not that obscure):"What is internet anyway?"Eventually someone tries to explain it, and Gumbel seems to just get more frustrated and incredulous:
How does one... what is it? What do you write to it, like mail?!?"It's not like they're supposed to be reporters or anything, who can do some research to find out what it is they're talking about...
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Filed Under: bryant gumbel, internet, katie couric, today show
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Backup copy
http://www.metatube.com/en/videos/48476/Today-Show-January-1994-What-is-the-Internet/
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Yikes. You're right. I updated the quote.
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Teachers that don't teach but preach make up 13% of American teachers.
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Idiots
But I like the Canadian announcer from the CBC in his report about the Internet's.
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I loved this...
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Re: I loved this...
You jelly, AOL?
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I wonder how much landfill space those things are taking up...
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The idea of CDs being used as drink coasters never made any sense to me. The whole idea of a coaster is to keep moisture off the table by providing a barrier. Except that CDs have a hole in the center which can act as a drain. Not only that, since the plastic doesn't absorb liquid, it would just pool on the surface and spill off when you picked it up.
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Internet Address
I cannot wait until this appears on 30 rock.
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Well, technically, at that time, that wasn't entirely correct.
Of course, I can't find any references to back up my claim, but trust me, I took typing in Jr. High and that's not what it used to be called.
I'm fairly certain that the majority of people familiar with that symbol (outside of the computing world) at that time would know it as an accounting symbol signifying "each at", as in, "five pairs of shoes @ at $100"
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign#History
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With the introduction of e-mail came the popularity of the @ symbol. The @ symbol or the "at sign" separates a person's online user name from his mail server address. For instance, joe@uselessknowledge.com. Its widespread use on the Internet made it necessary to put this symbol on keyboards in other countries that have never seen or used the symbol before. As a result, there is really no official name for this symbol.
http://atsymbol.com/history.htm
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Give them a break
There was no web to speak of, people like me who were heavily into CompuServe knew the internet as this necessary evil to send mail to people outside CIS but which (without MIME yet becoming widely accepted as the defacto way to attach a file) was a real mess to use for communication and tended to full your screen with horrible headers few could understand.
At this point "the internet" (Archie, Gopher etc) was for serious geeks only.
You could argue that they shouldn't have been even trying to do the segment without more research, but to not know what they were talking about in 1994 hardly put them at the bottom of the pile.
In fact considering there was no real web yet, it was actually fairly prescient for them to be even realising it was worth talking about
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Re: Give them a break
I never understood that Gopher thing. I know it was like... link browsing? But each click just seemed to randomly take you elsewhere and another set of links.
Maybe in the USA it was more popular, I don't know. I'm a tech person, nowadays I use internet more than anything else and understand most of the protocols and concepts. Still, Gopher don't make no sense to me.
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Re: Give them a break
Agreed Griff. The folowing link shows what folks were using to access the WWW in 1994:
timeline of browsers
Mosaic was the main browser, Windows was at version 3.1 and 2400 baud modems were still common. The Internet was hardly mainstream. Personally I was still spending more time on USENET than the WWW in 1994.
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"Now, how exactly do I have my consciousness digitized and uploaded into the HoloWeb?"
"Geez granddad, push the green button!"
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About?!?!
Katie's on very thin ice...
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it was 1994... not everyone had caught on to the internet quite yet so them not knowing about it could be easily excused. if this was an off the cuff spontaneous conversation their total lack of knowledge could even be excused (a little bit, not completely). keep in mind some of what was super shiny and new in 1994:
ordering pizza from pizza hut started in 1994
consumers finally outpace academics by 2:1
netscape was founded
mosaic still climbing the charts
the 20million user number had not yet been hit
some 'best of the internet' lists for 1994 still include separate categories for best gopher site and 'best workaround for non-SLIP users'.
oddly, some things never change such as the dire warnings back in 1994 that the 'information superhighway' is going to fall under government protection which as all other things the government attempts to regulate causes it to basically suck more than a black hole.
and yes the idea that "A protocol will be developed for smaller interest groups to form larger common-interest federations."
its fun to look at this video and be judgmental about their knowledge (or lack thereof) on the internet but keep in mind... the internet as we know it was still quite young at that time just as katie and bryant were... thankfully time has improved two of those three.
ill let you figure out which two...
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Now if you'll excuse me I need to go make myself 2 Courics lighter.
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