About 0:22 into the video. The two that CC is interviewing.
[OK, it’s 1983, and Al Gore hadn’t invented the Internet yet, and I understand their point, that for most people it would have been just an expenise toy. Just looking for who they were.]
What Al Gore really said, “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.” In other words, he never said he invented the internet. On the other hand, the Internet did exist in 1983. Just not in the form with which you’re familiar.
(This is why it doesn’t pay to include political cracks in the OP.)
By now it’s become a “cute” internet in-joke. The Politics of Gore have shifted to global warming.
I don’t know who they are, possibly because the future has left them behind. Or they got computers. Or died.
Eh. . .
If only David Horowitz had been replaced by a computer in 1983.
I think those are authors Franklynn Peterson and Judi Kesselman-Turkel, who were actually noted computer experts at the time. We don’t see the whole interview with them. We don’t know whether they are saying that computers are just a flash in the pan, a fad that will fizzle, or whether they are simply saying that the typical American does not need to run out and spend $2,000 on one (that’s what they cost in 1983, and did very little-- word processing, and spread sheets, mostly, and some text-based games), or be left in the dust. That was probably reassuring to people who did not have $2,000 lying around.
It was similar to the question in 1989 about whether you “needed” a car phone. They cost about $800 just to buy and install, and then another $100/month, and the service and sound were both lousy. If you were not a transplant surgeon or the fire chief, you really didn’t need one. But I know people who were panicking that in two or three years (that is, 1991 or 92) all public phones would be gone, and shelling out money they didn’t have for the car phone. Pay phones are still not gone entirely now.
How much and exactly what technology do you need is a personal question. Most people did not need $2,000 Commodore 64s in 1983.
I think we have a winner. Thanks.
They were more like $400
Columbia bought my parents computers in 1978, and they were about $2,000 each then. I had no idea what a Commodore 64 cost, just that it was the cool new computer for the 80s.