1994: Are YOU Ready for the INTERNET? | Tomorrow's World | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

imagine a world where every word ever written every picture ever painted and every film ever shot could be viewed instantly in your home via an information super highway a high capacity digital communications network what that would mean is you could transform your home into a mammoth interactive entertainment center with your stock exchange and shopping center thrown in it sounds pretty grand but it all comes down to computers communicating and in fact that's already happening on something called the internet that anyone in the world with a computer and a modem to connect it to a telephone line can subscribe to there are over 20 million people connected up and one person in particular i know is connected is the american president bill clinton and i know that because i used this computer to write to him today and i've already got a reply from the white house and here it is right thank you for writing to president clinton via electronic mail the president is committed to integrating this dynamic medium into the white house and it goes on to give some details of his government's policy to encourage the building of information super highways now i can't electronically mail our prime minister john major because he hasn't got a modem and i can't find out what his government's policy on information super highways is because it hasn't got one at least nothing beyond the usual thing of leaving it to market forces but you can do more than just send messages on the internet there's there's loads of useful information in here you can get news recipes and and i found this satellite weather map in there and there are interactive services as well this is this is a shopping center and here it says it's just off the information super highway that's its address and inside there's um there's a flower shop and it shows me the picture of the flowers i can order and tells me how much they cost then all i have to do is tap in the address i want them to go to and of course i have to give them my credit card details to pay and there's even some stuff about us in here let me just find that for you because we've just put some details on the internet about tonight's program and some pictures as well it's all good fun but what limits the potential of all this is that it's relatively slow you can't play a video down this in fact most of that stuff we've had to receive in advance that's because copper telephone lines are really designed for people to talk down not for computers but with an information super highway built with high capacity fiber optic cables you're not limited to shifting around text and the odd picture you can send high quality sound and video as well so when are we going to get all this then at the moment regulations restrict what services can be offered by phone companies cable television operators and so on but in america for any company who's prepared to invest in an information super highway there's a new law which means they can transmit anything they like on it video music telephones data the lot as long as they let other people provide services on it too but it's not just a license to print money the companies will also be compelled to connect every classroom and library free of charge so society stands to benefit as well here in britain though restrictions still apply bt for example isn't allowed to do cable tv but they're developing some interesting ideas to get what they can out of their existing copper phone lines like video on demand we've got a setup here to show what they're aiming at the idea is from the comfort of your armchair you'll choose whatever video you want and it'll be played down your phone line to your own tv it'll not just be movies though there'll be other tv programs too like this travel program i've selected here now the other thing is because it's interactive as well say i was wondering where he got his suit from it'd not only tell me that but i could even buy one here and now via the inevitable home shopping option amani fancy that but this video on demand is a tricky thing to do without the extra capacity of the fiber optic cables i for one will be impressed when the real thing's up and running down phone lines but it could well be the first taste most of us will get of what will come rolling down the information superhighway it's ironic that it'll come on old phone lines but it could stay that way unless britain develops its own vision of what sort of information super highway it wants and how to get it you

Channel: BBC Archive

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Keywords: bbc, archive bbc, classic tv, british tv nostalgia, bbc archive, archive, the bbc archive, nostalgia, legendary television, retro tv, vintage, past science, classic tech, classic technology, tech, outdated science, outdated technology, retro tech, science and technology, vintage technology, future tech, bbc tomorrow's world, tomorrows world, tomorrow's world, kate bellingham, information superhighway, early internet, 1990s internet, 90s tech, retro internet, 90s computer

Id: XpZ5STahhPE

Length: 5min 8sec (308 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 30 2022