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Yeah i have sometimes pondered why the terminal+mainframe combo never took of like the net did. And in the end i think it comes down to "multiplexing". Notice

Yeah i have sometimes pondered why the terminal+mainframe combo never took of like the net did. And in the end i think it comes down to "multiplexing". Notice how some talk about having 100s of browser tabs open. This may be to one site like wikipedia, or a multitude of sites as they follwed some chain of links down a proverbial rabbit hole in search of something. Similarly, dialing into an ISP didn't just allowe me to look up what that ISP had stored back during the early days. I had IRC, NNTP, email, web, and new stuff sprung up almost weekly it seemed. And for the most part i could have all of that going on a single connection. The net was not and ends, it was a means to an ends. This similar to how an OS, desktop or even app is not an ends, but a means to some ends. Some task i want to perform, be it calculate taxes, check news or communicate with friends or family.

pjc50 9y ago
There were terminal systems with integrated multiplexing. The one that survives into the modern age is the Bloomberg terminal, I suppose. The great advantage of the Internet is that it doesn't have integrated billing. This allowed marginal price to be driven to zero and the user to consume as much as they want without worry.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  I admit i am not familiar with the capabilities of a Bloomberg terminal, but i have the impression that it is tied strictly to the Bloomberg service. What i was thinking more of was how we can bring up the likes of Facebook and Twitter while only maintaining a connection to our ISP. I guess one could go deeper down the stack, and compare packet switched and circuit switched. This in that to me a terminal connection suggests a circuit switched connection. Yes, later on one got the idea of the terminal server. But the fundamental idea of a terminal, at least at the time, was that of a very intimate connection between terminal and a (rather bulky) computer.
msh 9y ago
I think internet connectivity was too expensive and unstable for cconsumers and small business for something like a terminal to take off when the internet took off(late 90ties, 2000snds).
gaius 9y ago
Yeah i have sometimes pondered why the terminal+mainframe combo never took of like the net did Replace terminal with smartphone and mainframe with cloud...
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Or ChromeOS. The web have indeed taken on some semblance of this over the years.

pjc50 9y ago

There were terminal systems with integrated multiplexing. The one that survives into the modern age is the Bloomberg terminal, I suppose. The great advantage of the Internet is that it doesn't have integrated billing. This allowed marginal price to be driven to zero and the user to consume as much as they want without worry.

digi_owl 9y ago
I admit i am not familiar with the capabilities of a Bloomberg terminal, but i have the impression that it is tied strictly to the Bloomberg service. What i was thinking more of was how we can bring up the likes of Facebook and Twitter while only maintaining a connection to our ISP. I guess one could go deeper down the stack, and compare packet switched and circuit switched. This in that to me a terminal connection suggests a circuit switched connection. Yes, later on one got the idea of the terminal server. But the fundamental idea of a terminal, at least at the time, was that of a very intimate connection between terminal and a (rather bulky) computer.

msh 9y ago

I think internet connectivity was too expensive and unstable for cconsumers and small business for something like a terminal to take off when the internet took off(late 90ties, 2000snds).

gaius 9y ago

Yeah i have sometimes pondered why the terminal+mainframe combo never took of like the net did Replace terminal with smartphone and mainframe with cloud...

digi_owl 9y ago
Or ChromeOS. The web have indeed taken on some semblance of this over the years.