Post-Modemism: the Role of User Adoption of Teletext, Videotex & Bulletin Board Systems in the History of the Internet
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POST-MODEMISM: THE ROLE OF USER ADOPTION OF TELETEXT, VIDEOTEX & BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEMS IN THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET by Jay Kelly McKinnon B.A. University of British Columbia, 2003 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the School of Communication Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology Ó Jay Kelly McKinnon 2012 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2012 All rights reserved. However, in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada, this work may be reproduced, without authorization, under the conditions for “Fair Dealing.” Therefore, limited reproduction of this work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting is likely to be in accordance with the law, particularly if cited appropriately. Approval Name: Jay Kelly McKinnon Degree: Master of Arts Title of Thesis: Post-modemism: the role of user adoption of teletext, videotex & bulletin board systems in the history of the Internet Examining Committee: Chair: Roman Onufrijchuk, Senior Lecturer Richard Smith Senior Supervisor Professor Peter Anderson Supervisor Associate Professor Adam Holbrook External Examiner Associate Director, Center for Policy Research on Science and Technology, Simon Fraser University Date Defended/Approved: March 29, 2012 ii Partial Copyright Licence iii Abstract The enduring policy conflicts of the Information Age increasingly demand a history of technology that acknowledges the legacy of accumulated user experience across successive paradigms and generations of communication media. Interrogation of the histories of Internet, teletext, videotex and bulletin board system (BBS) technologies, reveal the 1980s as a watershed decade for the radically decentralized socialization of digital communication. While each new technical paradigm requires cultural practices to socialize the products of engineering, the prevalence of elite- and infrastructure-focused histories reflect a systematic preference for describing centralized processes of engineering. This work integrates disparate accounts of technological innovation, diffusion, adoption and translation, pointing the way toward a more flexible, user- focused, people’s history of the Internet. Keywords: Internet history; bulletin board system; teletext; videotex; innovation; diffusion; iv Dedication Since there is no clear line available to demarcate the modem from the postmodem, the latter comes to express both an ‘end’ of the former and a radical continuation of it. v Table of Contents Approval .......................................................................................................................... ii Partial Copyright Licence ............................................................................................... iii Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iv Dedication ....................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ................................................................................................................. viii List of Figures................................................................................................................. ix 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Contemporary Context ........................................................................................... 2 1.2. Technologies Forgotten & Ignored .......................................................................... 3 1.3. A Problem of History ............................................................................................... 3 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS ........................................................................... 8 2.1. Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn). ................................................ 9 2.2. Diffusion of Innovations (Everett Rogers). ............................................................ 11 2.3. Social Constructivism (Pinch & Bijker) .................................................................. 15 2.4. Generative Metaphors (Lakoff & Schön) ............................................................... 18 2.5. Synthesized Model ............................................................................................... 20 3. Academic Interest in CMC Paradigms............................................................... 22 3.1. Method: keyword frequency analysis .................................................................... 23 3.2. Keyword clusters in popular databases ................................................................ 26 3.3. Sources of error and bias ..................................................................................... 27 3.4. Lexis-Nexus.......................................................................................................... 28 3.5. Worldcat ............................................................................................................... 30 3.6. Ngram .................................................................................................................. 35 3.7. Interpreting the Results ........................................................................................ 37 4. The Technologies ............................................................................................... 39 4.1. Videotex and Teletext ........................................................................................... 39 4.1.1. Timeline of development ........................................................................... 41 4.1.2. Teletext & Videotex Case Studies ............................................................. 44 4.2. Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) .............................................................................. 51 4.2.1. Diffusion of the BBS, 1977-1984 ............................................................... 53 4.2.2. Formalization of Network: FidoNet ............................................................ 59 4.2.3. The Currency of Content ........................................................................... 63 vi 5. Falling Through The Net .................................................................................... 65 6. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 70 References ................................................................................................................... 73 Appendices .................................................................................................................. 82 Appendix A Statistics Regarding Teletext and Videotex .............................. 83 Appendix B. Graduate studies in CMC technologies (WorldCat) .................. 86 Appendix C. Books published mentioning CMC technologies (Ngram) ......... 89 Appendix D Tables of Correlation ................................................................ 94 Appendix E. Graphs of the Frequency of Internet Cluster Keywords ............ 95 vii List of Tables Table 1. Number of articles and graduate studies by technology keyword ................. 31 Table 2. Teletext Systems in Operation by 1984 ........................................................ 83 Table 3. Videotex Systems in Operation by 1984 ...................................................... 84 Table 4. Trade-offs Between Average Waiting Time and Teletext Service Characteristics ............................................................................................. 85 Table 5. Most Popular Services on The Source, January 1980 .................................. 85 Table 6. Technology by theses and dissertations indexed (WorldCat) ....................... 86 Table 7. Technology cluster by theses and dissertations indexed (WorldCat) ............ 87 Table 8. Technology cluster keyword by percent of GoogleBooks (Ngram) ............... 89 Table 9. Technology keyword by percent of GoogleBooks (Ngram) ........................... 91 Table 10. Correlations between trends in graduate work by cluster ............................. 94 Table 11. Correlations between trends in books published by cluster .......................... 94 viii List of Figures Figure 1. Frequency of BBS, teletext and videotex keywords in Lexis-Nexus ............. 29 Figure 2. Frequency of technology keywords in Lexis-Nexus, without teletext ............ 29 Figure 3. Percent of graduate studies per year per keyword cluster ............................ 33 Figure 4. Frequency of graduate studies on teletext, videotex, Telidon and Minitel .......................................................................................................... 33 Figure 5. Percent of graduate studies per year per keyword cluster ............................ 34 Figure 6. Percent of GoogleBooks mentioning technology clusters ............................. 36 Figure 7. Teletext network .......................................................................................... 40 Figure 8. Videotex network ......................................................................................... 41 Figure 9. Bulletin board system or BBS network ......................................................... 55 Figure