Kate Bellingham reports that an exciting new interconnected world – a world where every word ever written, every picture ever painted and ever film ever shot will be at our fingertips – is tantalisingly close. The information superhighway will be a high-capacity digital communication network, which in time could revolutionise the way we shop, socialise and work.
The groundwork for this technological behemoth is already well underway, with computers already communicating with one another to allow users to send electronic mail (President Bill Clinton is already connected) and access news, weather and even some shopping services. For the information superhighway to really take off though, it needs more capacity than the UK’s ageing network of copper telephone wires can provide. Is Britain prepared to invest in the sort of high-capacity fibre-optic cable network that can make the technological utopia a reality?
Originally broadcast 29 April, 1994.
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47 comments
30 years later I have my fibre optic installed yesterday.
Who would've known back then all that science would lead us to watching twerking video's.🤪
This sounds amazing. Imagine having a decentralized currency on the internet too.
I long for the pre-web life.
No, unfortunately I wasn't ready for the influx of double-digit mouthbreathers flooding usenet around that time.
Remember, remember…the eternal September.
she sounds like chatGPT … i'm not sure if it's sad or not that the future was so predictable back then. A hundred years before, i doubt people could conceive of the idea.
kind of wild how opposed to the 1994 cabinet this is
Nah – it'll never catch on.
No. I'm NOT ready for this witchcraft!
Looks rather like a modern 90s style video than a real old programme
This was so behind the times. My firm implemented an email system in 1983. We were linked via the internet (sorry……'Information Superhighway') to partner firms, brokers etc and trading electronically in the early 1990's.
Skip forward 30 years. Now we have the dark net where you can buy weapons and drugs. And the Information Super Highway gets more use for Porn and people photoing what they had for breakfast more than anything Tomorrows Word suggested. Its amazing how dumbed down we are to the possibilities of technology.
Boomers (like me) remember the times before internet. And now, 30 yrs later we are glued to Facebook boasting about our lives with travel and all the fun we appear to be having. Pictures of fancy drinks with palm trees in the background blasting out from boomers accounts. Silly and childish, most of us donot partake in this type of immature behaviour.
30 years later. First world society is in a downward spiral because of addictive social media, misinformation, instant gratification and exploitation of vulnerable people. Thanks internet! Having lived the first half of my life without it being very good for media transmission, I can honestly say looking back, we were better off without it.
Now as a parent, I'm trying to devise ways to protect my kids from it, because we are finally realizing how bad all of this is.
Being demonstrated on a Sun SparcBook because Windows 3.11 was too unreliable.
Please don't throw that pizza away ⚡
I've never used the internet, and never will!
Thank god the cringy 8-syllable term "information superhighway" didn't stick
90s Kate Bellingham. My dream woman. 2024 KB still my dream woman actually.
BBC anti Tory as ever.
This will never take off, the internet is just a fad 😂
Well I'll be damned, she wasn't lying.
I sent an EMAIL to Bill Clinton.
Its titled "YOU ARE A R8PIST"
I wasn't ready.
I don't believe her where's her proof?
Да, как давно это было…
Can we tell everyone in 1994 to not go off the deep end with this whole “internet” thing?
Welcome, to the world of tomorrow!!
I was 13 when this programme came out. I remember it because the next day i was going to use the internet for the first time at an exhibition center. It was amazing. A woman sat me down at the computer and asked me what i wanted to do. I said i wanted to chat to anerican girls. Within five minutes and after lots of strange noises that is exactly what i was doing. I spoke to cherry in california. It blew me away. I often wonder if Cherry remembers me too.
Don,t use it
The internet should have never been invented. It’s made humanity worse.
lol to bad she didn’t know about crypto currencies
And I still deal with people who say "point com"
The next revolution is artificial intelligence, I wonder what life will be like in 20 years.
Damn! The UIs were horrible. 😂
MOW-DEM
This is all a bit meta
I don't know, I don't think it will ever catch on
Where the obvioust lies aren t checked. Where the gossip end high and serious people aren t heard. Where Volkswagen debt gets no editor text,and every fart beyonce lets does, what newspaper would it be if google were one. Where any idiot can say anything about holland, who apperently has not paid some subscription or protection money, so complete fools yak away about 'bicycle as a lifestyle?!' or mortgages heaven' as if banc dont hunt you down here,as opposed to usa.
And it it getting worse, for years now While cost of internet per motnh are steady, in the future we wont even be able to get to know the name of a company owner..'nah it may be a dossier with liabilities, better hush that. Show som e pictures of miley cyrus instead. What misery galore..reboot , anyone?
Eureka! I have seen The Future.
The Internet? Just a fad….
Darn. Dont you hate it when your information super highway goes down..
We need a video like this for Bitcoin.
I will never forget my first encounter with the internet. I think I was about 5 or 6, and was round at my uncle's house one evening. He was always heavily into technology, and was showing me this beige IBM computer in his back room connected to the internet…
I remember being absolutely fascinated and found it slightly eerie when he picked up the phone to let me listen to the data going down the line.
Control technology.
Do not let technology control you.
ahh … miss u my pentium 3 with my windows 2000 ,
1994 is not retro, oh wait, yes it is.
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