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.

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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.
  
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  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.
  
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  SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
3. 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?")
  
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  My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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 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?
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"

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-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.
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!
  
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  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.
  
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  Program Intellivision!
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.
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: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!

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You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Re:John Boehner: Solved by RPoet · 2011-02-01 08:39 · Score: 3, Funny

As an Orange-American, I find that highly offensive.

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"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
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!

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