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> the single largest advancement to humanity, even bigger than the moon landing Such an incredibly American thing to say, with a healthy portion of recency bi
by diarrhea 3y ago
> the single largest advancement to humanity, even bigger than the moon landing
Such an incredibly American thing to say, with a healthy portion of recency bias sprinkled on top.
This is only beaten by that one time someone online referred to the HMS Titanic as USS Titanic. Because it was groundbreaking for its time, it must have been US American, of course.
- nickpp 3y agoThere was another government that tried to create an Internet: France's Minitel. It eventually failed miserably in front of the assault of private sector pushing the US Internet, even if it seemed as a good thing for a while.
- musicale 3y agoI don't know a lot about Minitel, but it sounds like it was impressively useful years before the web. In the US I'm sure many AOL users didn't think they needed the web. Apple even collaborated with AOL to create their own online service, eWorld, just as the web was taking off (they shut it down after a couple of years and migrated users to AOL.) There is an interesting effect where early technology adopters get left behind once a replacement technology takes off and goes mainstream. I'm sure many people who had Blackberry, Palm or i-mode devices didn't think they needed the iPhone.
- musicale 3y agoClaiming the Titanic would seem to be a peculiar kind of exceptionalism, assuming it wasn't a joke or a typo. And wasn't the web (which is how people commonly experience the internet) invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN?