A decade before the Internet went mainstream, French citizens were interacting via Minitel, a computer network open to anyone with a telephone

"The story of how Minitel came to be is a fascinating but largely forgotten one. To the extent that it’s remembered today, Minitel is portrayed as a closed, centralized system encumbered by government bureaucracy that failed to change with the times. But back in 1983 it was like nothing anyone had seen before, eventually growing to have more than 20,000 online services before the World Wide Web even got off the ground....

A decade before the Internet went mainstream, French citizens were interacting via Minitel, a computer network open to anyone with a telephone

"The story of how Minitel came to be is a fascinating but largely forgotten one. To the extent that it’s remembered today, Minitel is portrayed as a closed, centralized system encumbered by government bureaucracy that failed to change with the times. But back in 1983 it was like nothing anyone had seen before, eventually growing to have more than 20,000 online services before the World Wide Web even got off the ground....