Way back in 1981, this report appeared on KRON-TV News in San Francisco. This not-young man who OWNED A HOME COMPUTER had dispensed with reading his daily newspapers on paper in favour of reading them online. It took only two hours to download the paper using his Radio Shack computer and acoustic coupler. "We're not in it to make money," says the editor from the San Francisco Examiner, and 30 years later, newspaper publishers still haven't figured out how to make their websites pay.
"Engineers now predict that the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer," says KRON reporter Steve Newman, "but that's a few years off."
Oy, that’s a blast from the past… red rotary phones (used to have a surcharge for a coloured phone and another for a *red* phone), acoustic couplers, $0.20 for a paper… and that “cubbyhole” is palatial!!! (those were the days of mismatched tables and chairs instead of egonomic cubes, too.) Interesting that the “future” was seen as printing stories out on paper and saving them… sigh...
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