No abstract

A teletext trial in Washington, D.C., provides some clues about the public's uses of, expectations for, and fears of electronic text services.Teletext services are rapidly penetrating national markets in Britain, Sweden, Austria, and other European countries. Many expect that teletext will enjoy similar success in the United States within the next few years. Relative to more exotic media for electronic publishing, teletext has the advantages of being inexpensive for consumers and easy to produce for suppliers, for it is transmitted in the vertical blanking interval of broadcast television. Of course, it also has the disadvantages of a one-way rather than two-way capability and a small data base. Put simply, teletext represents a no-frills version of electronic publishing.Associated with the development of teletext services are many practical marketplace questions, production and design issues, and policy concerns. For example, will consumers purchase teletextequipped TVs? What is the relative value of graphics in such a service? What role should public broadcasting play in the development of teletext services?

This chapter describes how relevant the study of new media and telecommunication innovations, such as videotex, has been to research on developments around the Internet and the Web. It elaborates the distinctions between the Internet and the Web. Additionally, some of the more interesting links between research issues from long ago (in Internet time!) and those of significance today are explained. Online databases developed the initial designs for information services that would appear on the Web. CompuServe and The Source are the best-known ASCII videotex services. These videotex services provide links to other organisations with which the companies did business. The Internet was initially an infrastructure that efficiently transmitted data and at very low cost; fairly soon, it also became able to transmit asynchronous and real-time voice and video. The Internet community resolved the problem of interlinking disparate computer systems so as to produce new and synergistic wholes.

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