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Minitel Hits Twenty
An anonymous submitter writes "Minitel is now 20 years old, according to this article from BBC News: 'Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch, but it is not far off. Unlike the internet, Minitel is a closed network, based on the phone system of its owner, France Telecom. Using one of its prehistoric-seeming terminals, users can access a labyrinth of proprietary content, all of it determinedly low-graphics and designed for speed.' Slashdot has reported on Minitel before."
Recall though, that the WWW and the Internet are two distinct things. They happen to overlap and to some extent are the same thing now but they weren't originally. I do see your point, though, that minitel is interesting because it was reg'lar folks compared to the academicians and spooks and defense wonks that ran Darpanet; however, it seems apparent that the Internet really sprang and evolved out of Darpanet where as Minitel is still running a somewhat, how shall I put this, archaic system. I find it hard to believe that an entirely isolated and non-evolving system can be considered even a proto internet when obviously its effects on the current Internet were limited if any.
Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch
A stretch of about 30 years. The internet is 1.5 times the age of minitel.
Minitel is trusted not just because it is an integral part of French life, but because its closed network is guaranteed virus-free and hacker-proof
Both famous last words.
That's a rather odd statement, given that 1) the defining characteristic of 'last words' is ensueing death or failure, and 2) these 'famous last words' have now lasted for some 20 years.
Seriously, 20 years working is a damn good achievement for any IT system, even if it should fall apart tomorrow.
Ah but not so. For someone who worked for Prestel, you must surly have noticed its passing similiarity to service such as Ceefax?
Almost every TV sold in Britian sold in the past two decades can still recieve Ceefax; does that mean the British have a bizzare xenophobic-rooted obsession with the outdated Ceefax?
Now just to be fair I will point out that Ceefax does not work over digital transmissions and thus cannot be recieved now by about 1 million Britons, and will be dead at the same time as analogue transmissions are stopped some time in 2010. T.V's now also seem to be lacking Ceefax capabalities, which is also going to speed its demise.
Yes, it was a dumb mistake on the author's part, exposed to all the ravenous non-believers. He is talking about the internet as we know it now, a functional forerunner of the internet as far as the position it takes in a lot of people's daily lives. 20 years ago, regular Frenchies turned to Minitel for various information like everyone else does with the internet today. If you think ARPAnet was something any schmuck could dial-in to with his modem and get the weather and news- especially 30 years ago- you've got another thing coming to you... :P
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
This is true, however the Internet really did grow out of ARPAnet. The one big important thing to notice is the protocol it uses (TCP/IP) and the way it works (layered approach, interconnictivity across multiple platforms and lines). From what I gather on this Mintel is a closed system, that works based on a special kind of terminal and only uses modems for its communication.
Well the revolutionary thing about the Internet, that allowed it to grow so large, was not the idea of connecting computers together. You already had plenty of that, universities would have many system that would talk through serial or something like it, and you could dial into little mini-networks in the form of BBSes. The revolutionary thing was that it was all open and interoperable and could be made to work with anything on anything through anything.
You can dial in to an ISP with a modem using a Mac, he can connectot to his upstream provider with something archaaic like X.25, that provider can use POS fibre to connect to all his neighbours, who can connect with ATM to their neighbours, who can connect ot another ISP with frame relay, who can connect via DSL to a computer that is running FreeBSD and offering a web page.
That is what makes it so cool. YOu don't have to have one kind of terminal, you don't have to have one kind of OS, you don't have to have one kind of physical wiring. So long as your unit speakes IP, it is good to go. This made a really diverse network possable, and also ensured its survival. New technologies come out all the time, and they can be used on the Internet. You aren't restricted to one kind of line for transport.
That's why ARPAnet is the real father of the Internet, because that's where it all started. There were plenty of other closed system like Mintel like, say AOL. You dialed in with modems, talked to a proprietary, closed network. Great, like I said, just a big version of a BBS. With the Internet, all of a sudden you can just connect to a huge decentralized network, and anyone can connect with anything and basically do anything with it. You aren't limited to one kind of interface (like a text terminal), people can invent new apps to communicate and implement them.
The article seems to imply that prior to the internet, none but the Frenchies had this kind of information service available to them. I dunno about anyone else here, but for me, the functional forerunner of the internet, and what I used well into 1999 (even though I started using the internet around 1991) were BBSes. There were also paid information services like PC-Link, Apple's eWorld, CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL... some being around since the early 80s, other latercomers.
Of course, the percentage of American households calling up these BBSes and commercial ISes was probably lower than households which use their Minitel box with any sort of regularity, but I just felt the need to point out another thing that served as a functionally proto-internet.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
And IIRC, the making pots of money part was an added extra to Minitel. The reason why France Telecom (then part of the French govt) introduced it was that they worked out it would be cheaper to set up the service and *give* a terminal to all subscribers and then make them do their directory enquiries for free through it than print phone books for the whole population.
A bit of imagination that British business and the British govt just don't seem to have any more.
Yes France Telecom still makes a profit off of this obsolete technology, but why would anyone care, they're not forcing anyone to buy one, and there's no exclusive content. I personally don't like FT for many other reasons, but the minitel living on is a non-issue.
The quickest way to become an atheist is to study the Bible thoroughly.
The French have a pretty impressive list of high-tech ventures in recent times. They have implemented chip technology in their credit cards (since the fraud was getting out of hand). They made the Concorde with the British. They created TGV - high-speed trains that compete with airline traffic on short- to mid-range flights. The Minitel is old tech now, but I bet it was an inspiration to AOL.
;)
Not bad for a bunch of frog-eaters
Stop the brainwash
MiniTel was standard in France when a few non-french were still fiddling about with the C64 and 4 Mailboxes across the atlantic. Shure that HW was rugged and not very flexible and that modem was superslow, but it was a standard.
And its acceptance was much broader than that of the Inet today. *Everybody* would use it. For chatting, billing (payment via phonebill) and offline communication via bb and the like. The boxes were small compared to todays PCs and everyone with more than 2 braincells and a little bit of common sense could operate them instantly. There were public MiniTel booths everywhere and even pubs, clubs and restaurants would have one or two. Remember, this came something like 15 years before there where Internet Cafe's.
In terms of "being online" France really was ten years ahead of time. At least.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca