What’s the Internet? (on 1994's Today Show)

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What’s the Internet? (on 1994's Today Show)

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday February 1, 2011 @07:00AM from the how-do-you-pronounce-at dept.

kkleiner writes "In a hilarious video segment from January 24th 1994, The Today Show morning anchors Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric stumble over the identity and jargon of the internet technology that has come to define the past decade. Gumbel is unclear how you pronounce "@", Katie Couric suggests "about", and no one wants to say "dot" when they read ".com". Confusion with lingo aside, The Today Show cast has to ask a crew member to clarify how the internet works. Do you write to it like mail? Is it just in Universities? Does it require a phone line? This was less than two decades ago, and it's a wonderful reminder of how unprepared the mainstream media was for the innovation that was about to sweep the globe. As the crew member says of the internet, "it's getting bigger and bigger all the time." What a delightful understatement."

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Why is this funny? by wideBlueSkies · 2011-02-01 07:02 · Score: 5, Informative

You can't exactly blame these guys for not knowing. The information superhighway was new or unheard of to about 95% of people at that time. Heck, AOL and compuserve hadn't even peaked yet.
You could probably have blamed their producers or research people though.. for not giving them the 5 minute education beforehand.

--
Huh?
1. Re:Why is this funny? by eldavojohn · 2011-02-01 07:09 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You could probably have blamed their producers or research people though.. for not giving them the 5 minute education beforehand.
  I might point out that the format of these daily TV shows seems to encourage uninformed people to learn with the host(s). We work day jobs so we don't see this anymore but I think what appeals to my grandmother about Regis is that he acts like an average guy just trying to figure stuff out ... and she can identify with that. Note that I said "uninformed" not "stupid." I would posit that the American people would rather embark on a learning adventure than be lectured ... I think this is why Bill Nye (yes, I know he wasn't the original) appealed to me so much as a kid.
  
  I agree I didn't find this very funny, I did not have a computer at the time and spent the majority of my free time reading, bailing hay, playing trombone and walking endless up and down acres of field collecting rocks baseball size or larger. Had you asked me about any of the technologies they addressed here, my answer might have been just as hilarious and even more clueless. Oh well, gotta start somewhere.
  
  I found it cute or quaint at worst. Cute to recall the time when we didn't have this powerful force dictating and providing so much.
  
  --
  My work here is dung.
2. Re:Why is this funny? by elrous0 · 2011-02-01 07:18 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  1994 was the year I first got internet access myself. And my access consisted of an email address, telnet, and gopher. Almost no one had WWW access then (though Cello and Mosaic were around). It would be another 1995 before I would get a SLIP account to access the web directly (and this was at a major university). So, yeah, I don't really fault them either for not knowing.
  
  --
  SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
3. Re:Why is this funny? by commodore64_love · 2011-02-01 07:25 · Score: 2
  
  >>>I agree I didn't find this very funny
  I think it's funny but not in the "haha you're stupid" vein, but more like how you laugh when a child is first learning to walk or write. My niece wrote "I hat you" on my laptop and when I read it out loud, she started laughing at herself.
  I like to watch old videos from the 80s era. People are even more ignorant. "You call this a keyboard?" Um... yeah that's what it be called. Just like a typewriter.
  
  --
  "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
4. Re:Why is this funny? by eln · 2011-02-01 07:50 · Score: 2
  
  It's interesting to contemplate how much things have changed since then. In 1994 I was a junior in high school and had to give a presentation on some sort of computer-related topic to my CS class. I chose the Internet, which I had been on for about 5 years by then, and nobody else in the class had even heard of it. To assist in my research, my teacher lent me a copy of O'Reilly's "Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog" (first edition). That book, at around 420 pages long, told you basically everything you needed to know to use the Internet at that time, including a fairly comprehensive list of the most useful gopher, web, and ftp sites available.
  
  Later that year, I taught a class on building personal web pages to a small group. We covered basically everything there was to know about creating state-of-the-art web pages at the time in a single day.
  
  A year later, the dot com boom happened and everything changed. Prior to 1995, though, the Internet was still largely unknown to the general public.
5. Re:Why is this funny? by Jason+Levine · 2011-02-01 08:41 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I had only gotten Internet access a year prior. I remember hopping onto gopher and being wide-eyed as I went from "site" to "site." Then I stopped at an entry titled "Middle East." Suddenly, I worried about getting in trouble for causing long-distance charges to my school so I signed off. I quickly learned that you didn't incur long distance charges online, though and clicked away next time.
  Of course, not too long later, I dialed in from home and was downloading some freeware from a "far away location" (i.e. another state). My father heard what I was doing and got upset that I was costing him long distance fees. He didn't understand either at the time.
  Now, we semi-regularly use Skype to video chat. (Lets them talk to my kids who do better with a "video phone" than a normal phone. Kids don't quite understand that the other person can't see what you see.) How technology's changed in just 17 years. Imagine what it will be like in 2028! ("What do you mean you had to type things out? With your fingers? Why didn't you just use thought-2-computer tech?")
  
  --
  My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
6. Re:Why is this funny? by mmarlett · 2011-02-01 09:03 · Score: 2
  
  In 1994, I was editor of the third daily online newspaper in the world (the Kansas State eCollegian). This not only wasn't funny, but really, really common. I had conversations with people like this all the time for at least a year. Mostly alumni calling over the phone, trying to find out how to read the college newspaper. And it was way more difficult to try to tell someone that, no, having a subscription to AOL is not Internet access but a closed BBS. And Prodigy. And whatever other service you're about to ask me about.
7. Re:Why is this funny? by nite_warrior · 2011-02-01 09:25 · Score: 2
  
  just to find out that it is a series of tubes
8. Re:Why is this funny? by LWATCDR · 2011-02-01 10:02 · Score: 2
  
  If a Journalist at that time ever got close to a computer hooked up to the internet. Those journalists probably graduated in the 70s or early 80s. Internet and even computers access for liberal arts majors wasn't common.
  
  --
  See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's a series of tubes by Toe,+The · 2011-02-01 07:02 · Score: 5, Interesting

Even today, a lot of people are pretty dang confused about what them there internets have on 'em.
1. Re:It's a series of tubes by h00manist · 2011-02-01 07:32 · Score: 2
  
  Even today, a lot of people are pretty dang confused about what them there internets have on 'em.
  And how to drive a non-automatic transmission vehicle, switch the AV setup from cable to watch the dvd, calculate their interest on the credit card, what's the relationship of pounds to kilos and meters to feet, read a map... Basic everyday activities. The internet did improve this, but education still could use a revolution.
  
  --
  Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
2. Re:It's a series of tubes by EvanED · 2011-02-01 07:58 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Basic everyday activities.
  The problem is that some of those things aren't really "basic everyday activities." Most dramatically, it certainly isn't a basic everyday activity for most people to drive a stick shift -- because most people don't have stick shifts. When are you going to drive one? There have only been a couple times ever where I've even really been in a situation in which I might have driven a stick if I knew how. (I'm not speaking from the authority of age here, but I have been driving for over a decade.)
Crusoe launch by suso · 2011-02-01 07:05 · Score: 3

Isn't Bryant Gumbel the same guy that asked that stupid question at the Transmeta press conference?
Oh, and the @ sign was there long before the Internet. Where do they get these people?
1. Re:Crusoe launch by silly_sysiphus · 2011-02-01 08:05 · Score: 2
  
  My preference is in italiano: "chiocciola"--snail. It's rather fun to get to refer to your email address as "sysiphus snail wind.it" (etc)
phone lines? by alen · 2011-02-01 07:05 · Score: 2

what's a phone line? my telephone works through time warner cable or the air
1. Re:phone lines? by commodore64_love · 2011-02-01 07:41 · Score: 2
  
  >>>what's a phone line?
  It's the twisted-pair copper that carries my internet (upto 50 Mbit/s via VDSL2).
  Speaking of phone lines, can my 56K Dialup modem be made to work through my cellphone? I'm thinking of an emergency use, like with the egyptians who have lost internet. The challenge would be connecting the POTS line from the modem to the cellphone's input. (Maybe this cable would work - http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/7830/ )
  
  --
  "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
2. Re:phone lines? by uglyduckling · 2011-02-01 08:01 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  No, you can't use your 56K modem over your cellphone... I'm not entirely sure if you're asking a real question or not, but if you want to know the answer - voice traffic over cellphones is compressed in a way that makes sense for voice - mostly the system ensures that everything arrives in the right order, and that there are not significant pauses. Voice communication is pretty tolerant to small gaps in the signal, so generally the network will just drop short segments because that it more natural in conversation that having pauses etc. in the middle of works while the network catches up. For baseband data (i.e. encoded on an audio signal, like an analogue modem) you want the system to _never_ drop data and never pause, you want it to just worsen in quality, and the modem will negotiate down on the rate until it can keep a reliable connection.
Re:those were the good old days by Anrego · 2011-02-01 07:14 · Score: 2

I remember when putting a video on the internet was a _big deal_.
Anyone remember realplayer?
Seriously, say what you will about youtube.. but what it's done for the internet is astounding.
Also wikipedia! Remember when finding information about something took effort! I remember spending hours trunging through a valley of geocities and angelfire pages and a minefield of ads .. now it's just there, and despite critisism, is usually accurate enough for casual purposes.
Re:Wow they're so clueless by sanosuke001 · 2011-02-01 07:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

/. should delete accounts of people who use the word "twitterverse"

--
-SaNo
Ahhh the memories... by Sponge+Bath · 2011-02-01 07:23 · Score: 3, Funny

1994, when you carried around spare bits in a glass jar and calculated bandwidth with a slide rule. I could tell you more, but my Alzheimer's is acting up.
Re:Internet is capitalized by pclminion · 2011-02-01 07:26 · Score: 3, Informative

Whether to capitalize the word "Internet" is hardly a settled matter. Personally, I don't care if you capitalize it, but if you start arguing about it like it's a big deal, you get put on my list of funny people.
FWIW by wideBlueSkies · 2011-02-01 07:30 · Score: 2

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
violence@nbc.ge.com
Technical details of permanent failure:
DNS Error: Domain name not found
----- Original message -----
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.103.246.22 with SMTP id y13mr9555665mur.76.1296588457799; Tue,
01 Feb 2011 11:27:37 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.102.211.39 with HTTP; Tue, 1 Feb 2011 11:27:37 -0800 (PST)
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 14:27:37 -0500
Message-ID:
Subject: test email
From: XXXXXXX
To: violence@nbc.ge.com
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001636765baf7278a3049b3d8653
Hello 1994... ;)

--
Huh?
1994? I was on the Internet in 1983. by Animats · 2011-02-01 07:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

Back in 1983, I was at "jbn@Ford-wdl1.ARPA":

Date: 15-Jul-83 14:03:40-PDT From: jbn@FORD-WDL1.ARPA Subject: Outstanding TOPS-20 TCP bug remains in v5.2 To: ICCB@BBN-UNIX.ARPA, Paetzold@DEC-MARLBORO.ARPA, CLynn@BBNA.ARPA, Tappan@BBNA.ARPA<br/> Cc: MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA For some months now, we have observed that the BBN TOPS-20 implementation of TCP does not perform the TCP close handshake properly. This problem has been documented and reported to the appropriate people as shown below. Crispin at SU-SCORE has just installed a new TOPS-20 monitor (5.2) and this outstanding problem has NOT been fixed. The effect of this problem is that when a system which correctly performs the handshake is talking to a noncomplying TOPS-20, and the TCP close is initiated from the non-TOPS-20 end, the non-TOPS-20 end will hang in the close and eventually time out. This tends to cause STOR operations in FTP to TOPS-20 sites to fail. It also has the annoying property for us that every time we get mail from a TOPS-20 site, our TCP logs a protocol violation. Larson at SRI has located the defective code in TOPS-20 as shown below. The messages below are the previous ones relating to this problem. As we at Ford Aerospace do not run any TOPS-20 systems, we do not directly have this problem, but our users who need to communicate with some of the TOPS-20 sites find this a continual annoyance. Because of the former importance of TOPS-20 in the ARPANET community, there has been an informal tradition that the TOPS-20 implementation has been considered the ``standard'' with which others were expected to interoperate. For this reason, it appears that considerable effort has been expended in some of the newer implementations (such as the 4.2BSD systems) to interoperate with TOPS-20 despite this problem. (Elaborate FTP strategies regarding data connection establishment are a means of getting around this problem). Other implementors should be aware of this problem so that such wasted effort can be avoided. John Nagle Ford Aerospace and Communications Corp.

This was back when Berkeley's TCP implementation was new and barely working. (Yes, kiddies, TCP/IP did not come from Berkeley.) Ever wonder why FTP uses a different data connection port for each transfer? That's how it started.
1. Re:1994? I was on the Internet in 1983. by lennier · 2011-02-01 10:36 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Back in 1983, I was at "jbn@Ford-wdl1.ARPA...
  John Nagle
  Ford Aerospace and Communications Corp
  *blinks*
  As in this John Nagle?
  Er.. hello!
  
  --
  You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
2. Re:1994? I was on the Internet in 1983. by Mr+Z · 2011-02-01 10:41 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  In all likelihood, the TCP connection you used to post that inane comment used John Nagle's algorithm. You sound like the one that needs a diaper change.
  
  --
  Program Intellivision!
Geek by Quiet_Desperation · 2011-02-01 07:47 · Score: 2

Not to mention all that computery stuff was, eeewwwwww, the province of geeks and nerds! Eew eww eww! The two of them could have just completed a three week course giving a concise yet detailed overview of the Internet and they would never admit to it. Little Katie could never face her Delta Delta Delta sisters again if she admitted computer knowledge. Besides, they were millionaires even then. WTF did they care?
In typical Slashdot form by sunking2 · 2011-02-01 07:48 · Score: 4, Funny

It only took 17 years for slashdot to pick up this story.
1. Re:In typical Slashdot form by Jason+Levine · 2011-02-01 08:34 · Score: 2
  
  Don't worry. The Dupe will appear in only 8 more years.
  
  --
  My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
2. Re:In typical Slashdot form by Wyatt+Earp · 2011-02-01 08:57 · Score: 2
  
  Slashdot went up in September of '97, I came across it at the end of September or early October '97. Back when the tag line was Chips and Dips and then pretty soon it turned in News for Nerds, etc and so forth.
  I think Hemos and CmdrTaco were in Wired in the spring of '98 after /. got big with the post Columbine traffic and Jon Katz being here.
John Boehner: Solved by monoqlith · 2011-02-01 07:58 · Score: 2

I was wondering where John Boehner got that orange hue. It turns out he's been in 1994 this entire time.
1. Re:John Boehner: Solved by RPoet · 2011-02-01 08:39 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  As an Orange-American, I find that highly offensive.
  
  --
  "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Re:Wow they're so clueless by pclminion · 2011-02-01 08:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually, /. should delete the accounts of people who do nothing but look for somewhere else the article has appeared first then bitch about how Slashdot didn't "scoop" it -- as if that's EVER how Slashdot worked.
Some of us aren't on Facebook, or Twitter, or whatever the fuck else you are using to get news. Thankfully we have Slashdot.
Re:Sigh... by timeOday · 2011-02-01 08:06 · Score: 3, Informative

They wouldn't have been doing anybody a favor by reporting on Bitnet, gopher, or Archie, since those never did catch on among Today Show viewers.
Very, very little of what now makes the Internet valuable to people existed at that time.
Re:Wow they're so clueless by game+kid · 2011-02-01 08:25 · Score: 4, Funny

But why? It's perfectly acceptable in the blogosphere!

--
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Re:Internet is capitalized by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 08:31 · Score: 2, Informative

It obviously validated the original poster's point that the issue was not settled. Your diatribe completely missed the essential point.
They're not doing so bad for January 1994 by ChrisCampbell47 · 2011-02-01 08:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

January 1994 actually WAS kind of early to understand the internet. I myself only caught on to it in summer 1993, with Mosaic running on Suns and Macs in the Georgia Tech computer labs. I could rock command-line FTP though.
Yes yes, some of you all had internet access / addresses well before then, and hooray for you. But in Jan 1994 it was still extremely new for average mainstream folks, like people who watch (and host) major network morning news shows.
Give the perma-snark a rest. And you kids get off my lawn!

--
One simple rule for its versus it's
Re:Man: I thought I was an "oldster" around here.. by dbIII · 2011-02-01 14:58 · Score: 2

If he knew John Nagle or IS John Nagle that is enough of a reason to be impressed if you know anything about TCP/IP networking.