Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Gramophone news service
WE SHOULD have guessed that the blog 鈥� dedicated to 鈥渢he visionaries, madmen, and tinkerers who created the future that never was鈥� 鈥� is by a Feedback reader. Steve Carper sends a 1911 image from Life, then a weekly humour magazine, answering our call for premonitions of the internet.
We had mentioned a 鈥渢ypical home of the future鈥� in Modern Mechanics magazine in June 1931, with a 鈥渞adio newspaper鈥� (15 November). Steve鈥檚 picture has a gentleman surrounded by horns of the kind that used to adorn wind-up gramophones, one offering 鈥渙pera delivered at your door鈥�. And, yes 鈥� to one side is the 鈥淚nternational Wireless Home News Service鈥�: a brass-pointer 鈥渕enu鈥� selects politics, stocks, sports and so on. But no kittens :-(
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Ah, technology. Making life easier. Rod Costigan sends a screenshot: 鈥淚nternet Explorer 11鈥� did not finish installing. Internet Explorer 11 is required in order to run this installation鈥�
Prefiguration in Budapest
OPERA delivered to your door? You could get that in Budapest from 1893 on the Hungarian city鈥檚 broadcast telephone service, . You could pick up a phone and listen to the news or music. The service continued .
An even less well-known service, the , served London from 1895 until the dawn of the BBC in 1922 doomed it.
A guess at futurity
ALSO sent by Steve Carper is a 鈥淕uess at futurity鈥� by Fred T. Jane, known now as the founder of . In October 1894, he produced the illustration in Pall Mall Magazine. This vision of the future featured cathedral-like sitting rooms with 5-metre flat screens and news on a capstan-controlled scroll.
Call us on the Telephonoscope
MARK TWAIN was the author of the earliest premonition of the internet we found, in his 1898 story (15 November). Richard Jones comfortably trumps this with a cartoon by George du Maurier from Punch in 1878, which shows fond parents in London using 鈥淓dison鈥檚 Telephonoscope鈥� to keep an eye on their offspring in the colony of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). It is a combination of speaking tubes and a screen that takes up a whole wall 鈥� and surely throws into question patents on video-calling services?
The round globe is a vast head
BEATING all the above, Craig Hanson sends a passage from Nathaniel Hawthorne鈥檚 1851 novel : 鈥淚s it a fact鈥� that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!鈥�
Recurring videophone vision
TELEPHONOSCOPE: a word to be treasured. It gives us a data point in our parallel search for repeated videophone announcements (22 November). Jeff Hecht digs into the notes for his book , a history of fibre optics. He finds a report by, er, himself in 快猫短视频 (15 September 1990, p 36). If we had more data points, we could check whether these premonitions present periodicity.
Soviet before its time
DISAPPOINTMENT in the actually existing 21st-century internet is invoked by another result of Jeff Hecht鈥檚 research into videophones. A famous book-scanning engine produces the phrase 鈥渕other called us on the videophone one evening鈥︹�� It , which it says was published in 1870. We are puzzled: the first Russian workers鈥� council 鈥渟oviet鈥� .
Puzzled by Skynet
BIG DATA is a buzz phrase of the year, not least around here. Steve Cassidy is sceptical. It seems to him that the commercial premise is that given enough information, 鈥� defined not as the antagonist of the Terminator films, but as 鈥渟hallow-minded marketing men shouting at downtrodden minimum-wage database programmers鈥� 鈥� can 鈥渄educe our innermost desires and parade in front of us those tchotchkes that are most likely to make us open our wallets and drain our self-control鈥�. (Feedback is not aware of any other language having an exact synonym for the Yiddish 鈥�tchotchke鈥�, a trinket of no discernible function.)
So why, then, he asks, 鈥渄id the Daily Telegraph鈥榮 rolling advert provider decide that what I needed to see, while reading about the UK Independence Party鈥檚 Nigel Farage, was the 鈥淕reta Garbo Ankle Weight Set鈥�, designed for minimal chafing and wearable under today鈥檚 fashionable jeans? I am a 52- year- old white male consultant, garrulous online鈥︹��
Compassion and a scam
FINALLY, a more physical scam has, we hear, befallen a friend of a friend of Feedback. A distraught young woman knocks on the door. Her car has broken down and she needs to collect her child from school. Her cellphone battery is flat. Can she please use your phone to call the school and car rescue service? It takes a while, but she is very grateful.
Later, the phone bill arrives. She was calling high-cost premium numbers 鈥� presumably to rack up charges for a company she鈥檚 working for. The friend of a friend advises: 鈥淏e kind, but dial the numbers yourself.鈥�