In 1987, Sears and IBM announced that they would open an online service! Wow--that would surely mainstream the online world. Millions of new compter owners would get online. Prices would drop, intersystem email would grow, and we wouldn't have to answer questions like "What's a modem?" or "What's email?"At least, that's what those of us already online with CompuServe, DELPHI, AOL, GEnie, and other services figured or at least hoped would be the result of these corporate giants going online.
It didn't quite happen that way. Prodigy managed to enrage most of its members by raising prices (they should never have promised unlimited free email and chat) and policing its bulletin boards, among other things. And you had to use their proprietary software (which eventually led to a fake scandal over Prodigy reading everyone's hard drives). And so forth.
The outfit managed to outrage and insult those who weren't members, as well. When Prodigy claimed to be the first online service in 1988, it was bad enough (as if CompuServe, DELPHI, AOL, et al, had never existed). But then in 1999 Prodigy claimed that it had invented the Internet ten years earlier!
What to see the rest of the story? It's in On the Way to the Web: the Secret History of the Internet and its Founders.What to see the rest of the story? It's in On the Way to the Web: the Secret History of the Internet and its Founders.
--Mike
Copyright © 2008, Michael A. Banks
No comments:
Post a Comment