The ‘Internet’ in 1969: No Storage in Sight!

The term “prescient” means “perceiving the significance of events before they occur.” Take a look at this brief YouTube video, posted only a few days ago, to see someone’s very prescient, nearly right-on idea about the Internet — in 1969!

The video, uploaded by YouTube itself but not credited to another individual, shows a lineup of specialized home computers being used for online shopping, home security monitoring (with remote videocams) and home business (i.e., bill and tax paying).

There is even a rudimentary “e-mail”-type machine, in which the user writes a message on a tablet with a “pen” and sends it off somewhere. The computers are called “consoles,” and a “central bank computer” and “communal service agency” are referenced.

This depiction is eerily close to today’s reality, decades ahead of when the Internet actually got rolling in 1994-95 with the graphical Netscape browser. Hard to imagine that Richard Nixon was president when this film was made.

We wish the piece was a bit longer and more detailed, but there is one major hole in all of this: Where is all the data/film/etc. stored? “Backup circuits” are mentioned, but we didn’t see anything resembling a storage machine.

Nonetheless, somebody was certainly on the ball back then.