[gioele]

Nostalgia aside, the most important part of the (scarce) article is

> “The Minitel was innovative for about 20 minutes, and died due to where it failed: by its centralization that never allowed it to evolve technologically: because it was under the control of France Telecom, for whom that control translated into huge profits.”

> “It is true that the Minitel taught French people how to use a keyboard and how to connect to online services,” he added. “But it taught them the opposite of what is the most important lesson about the Internet: its universality, and the decentralized character of its architecture.”

> Zimmerman now worries that legislative efforts to restrict the Internet will be similar to a “return to the Minitel”—in other words, a walled garden where many Internet users don’t stray beyond sites like Google or Facebook.

[Mvandenbergh]

I think 20 minutes understates it quite a lot. The first Minitels were introduced in the late 1970s, which is pretty early for a digital data service used by the mass market.

[gaius]

Exactly. You would think from the derision around the Web today, that they had, back in the 70s, smartphones and AJAX and Google and blah, blah but they chose to use dial-up terminals, because they were stupid...

[rbanffy]

> and died due to where it failed: by its centralization

It's not like you couldn't dial a private server. Due to the popularity of minitel terminals in Brazil (compared to personal computers with modems) many BBSs supported minitel terminals.

[mjwalshe]

i think FIDO and manyother BBS's suported videotext modes