When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2014, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
CompuServe Computer Information Service 2 Page
Amazon's catalog no longer lists this product (checked 2026-11-02). The name comes from the link HN users posted.
Not really. By '85, the idea that an all-encompassing global computer network was coming was pretty well established. SMTP and DNS were up and (as tdicola noted) there were already a fair number of people on a recognisable modern Internet. The ITU was already well into a very serious and high-profile push for its own alternative to TCP/IP. Sun Microsystems had already launched, and afaik had already made "the network is the computer" its slogan. CompuServe CIS was running two-page ads http://www.amazon.com/CompuServe-Computer-Information-Servic... ; Minitel was several years old. Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson had been celebrated or mocked figures in computing circles for many years. Flipping Neuromancer had come out the previous year.
(Speaking of Ted Nelson and ubiquitous microcomputers, the desirability of microcomputers in homes and schools was already received wisdom; the BBC had been evangelising it since 1981. I have colour-printed computer-programming books released by a major children's publisher (Usborne) around 1983-5 sitting behind my monitor here.)
So Jobs' statement wasn't remarkably prescient. Certainly, a lot of other people weren't as clearly aware of what was coming in 1985; but for someone whose job was to be the leader and chief visionary of a forward-looking computer company, "respectably well-informed" would be closer to it.
(I didn't downvote you.)