Watching this news report from KRON from 1981 — back when going online meant holding a big old land-line phone (ha, remember those) up to a receiver — you feel sort of like Bruce Willis in "12 Monkeys" picking up old reports from the beginning of the epidemic, or maybe watching the video is more like reading "Flowers for Algernon" as Charley first comes to the realization that he's doomed. The story tells all about how newspapers are experimenting with this new-fangled interwebs.
The best part might be about halfway through when they talk to a guy who looks like he's maybe 70 years old and is identified only as "owns home computer" who is about the only one in the piece who makes any sense. He calls the interaction between online readers "the future of the type of interrogation an individual will give to the newspapers." Finally, proof that a 70-year-old man in San Francisco invented blogging in 1981. [BlackBook]
