• Books by Chicago Boyz Contributors

  Insurgents and Awakening by Margaret Ball
  
  
  
  ------------
  The Clausewitz Roundtable, edited by Michael J. Lotus, Mark Safranski and Lynn C. Rees
  
  The Clausewitz Roundtable
  
  ------------
  A Time for Audacity: New Options Beyond Europe, by James C. Bennett
  
  A Time for Audacity
  
  ------------
  Kevin Villani on How Politicians Caused the Financial Crisis and Why their Reforms Failed
  
  Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue
  
  ------------

  Books by Celia Hayes

  ------------
  Dr. Michael Kennedy's Medical War Stories
  
  War Stories
  
  ------------
  Why America's Greatest Days Are Yet to Come
  
  America 3.0
  
  ------------

  VeryWellSaid.com Best-Selling Books by Topic
  Military History	(Top Rated)
  British History	(Top Rated)
  Middle East History	(Top Rated)
  Land Battles	(Top Rated)
  Naval Warfare	(Top Rated)
  Air Warfare	(Top Rated)
  9/11	(Top Rated)
  Terrorism	(Top Rated)
  Legal History	(Top Rated)
  IP Law	(Top Rated)
  Guns	(Top Rated)

  ------------ InternetTimesaver.com ------------ The Anglosphere Challenge
  
  
  The Anglosphere Challenge
  "Restore(s) a little sanity into current political debate" - Kenneth Minogue, TLS  "Projects a more expansive and optimistic future for Americans than (the analysis of) Huntington" - James R. Kurth, National Interest  "One of (the) most important books I have read in recent years" - Lexington Green
  ------------
  Oddschecker.com Politics

  • Advertising

    Chicago Boyz is a member of the Amazon Associates, B&H Photo, Ammo.com and other affiliate programs. Your purchases made after clicking those businesses' links help to support this blog.
    
    Some Chicago Boyz advertisers may themselves be members of the Amazon Associates and/or other affiliate programs and benefit from any relevant purchases you make after you click on an Amazon or other link on their ad on Chicago Boyz or on their own web sites.
    
    Chicago Boyz occasionally accepts direct paid advertising for goods or services that in the opinion of Chicago Boyz management would benefit the readers of this blog. Please direct any inquiries to

• How To Read This Blog
• • Log in
•   Enter your email to be notified of new posts:
  Email*
  

  
•   Problem? Question?
•   Contact Authors:


• Blog Posts (RSS 2.0)
• Blog Posts (Atom 0.3)
• Incoming Links

• Recent Comments

  • Loading...

2 Responses to “Adieu to the Minitel”

1. Lexington Green Says:
   June 30th, 2012 at 12:47 am

   A government’s stunted, pathetic idea of what the Internet was supposed to be.

2. David Foster Says:
   July 2nd, 2012 at 3:03 pm

   Commercialization of the Internet didn’t take place until the late 1980s/early 1990s. For the World Wide Web, public availability was announced in 1991, but WWW did not really take off until the Mosaic browser was introduced in 1993.

   Minitel was field-tested in Brittany in 1978 and rolled out nationwide in France in 1982. I think a better point of comparison than the Internet would be the proprietary consumer-oriented text oriented systems such as America OnLine (1983), Compuserve (1978, for the consumer service), General Electric’s GENIE (1985), Prodigy (1984), etc. NONE of these services has exactly covered itself with glory in the transition to the Internet age, and most have not survived at all.

   I don’t know a whole lot about Minitel, but my impression is that it compares very favorably with services such as the above, and was head and shoulders above anything done by the US monopolies and pseudo-monopolies (USPS, AT&T) comparable to the French PTT.