I ran across this in my copy of The Book of Lists II (published 1980) the other day, under the listing “6 Outragous Plans that Didn’t Happen.”
(Bolding mine)
::Pause::
Yeah, lousy Nixon! Trying to oppress the people with high-speed internet access…sure showed him, didn’t we? We don’t need computers in everyone’s house, conected to a global computer network…that’s just unnatural! :smack: 
Just thought y’all might get a kick out of that one. (Or a cheap laugh or two.)
People were idiots back in 1980… just look at their hair.
I remember someone posted this on the BB at a local sci-fi convention. It was then that I realised what a load of proganda nonsense the whole Book of Lists kids were pulling.
(OK, I kinda had hints before…)
My God, that’s hilarious.
Aw, Nixon was 20 years behind the curve. The idea of the internet has been close to the heart of geeks since the forties.
Of course, that story emphasised the intolerable chaos that comes of regular folks having convenient and relatively unlimited access to information, what with their dark natures compelling them to learn how to make explosives and untraceable poisons, avoid being caught out for using intoxicants, and all that – so the tendency towards luddism was something that needed to be overcome from the start.
The surprising part about the report is that they mention The Dick being “seemingly oblivious to the Big Brother aspects”. It’s almost refreshing to hear a description that does not have the Tricky One actually enthused by the BB aspect.
The original TBOL was a fun little item but it vectored a lot of UL and the succeeding editions really scraped the bottom.
But don’t knock this one completely – I mean, we now are wired and we ARE living in anxiety over ID theft, hacking, and security of our private info, aren’t we? Only instead of Big Brother the parties are his down-the-block neighbors Big Hacker, Big Spammer, Big Phisher, Big Trojan, and Microsoft. (AND Big Bro DOES want in on the action under pretext of fighting “teh’rrism” and kiddiepr0n.)
In a perverse way, however, having the original plan go nowhere DID turn out for the better – because it meant waiting for massified net-access until after the advent of the PC and Berners-Lee’s Web, so the true mass “onlining” of individuals in their private workplaces and homes came about from private enterprise (though built upon a backbone infrastructure that WAS the result of a public-funded program), rather than some central-controlled mega-government project, which would probably still be halfway through, 3x over budget, and locked into c. 1980 technology.
In my opinion Nixon was one of the best presidents we ever had… But what do the spoiled left-wingers did. exiled him to San Clemente. what did Nixon do . what he thought he had to do with a spineless traitor like Ellsberg… what have we gotten since Nixon. Peanut farmer Carter (the spineless wonder) Draft dodger 60’s radical slick willy clinton.???
Oh, please tell me this is a whoosh. Please.
Replying to cuban ninja, of course.