
John Turturro Introduces America to the World Wide Web in 1999 - hownottowrite
http://www.openculture.com/2018/08/john-turturro-introduces-america-world-wide-web-1999-watch-beginners-guide-internet.html
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newnewpdro
The part about it being just for video games teleported me back to childhood.

It was incredibly frustrating trying to learn linux and programming on my own
in a household having religious parents who saw everything with a screen as
corrupting Television/Videogames. It was, I shit you not, a constant war just
to be able to study anything directly involving the computer.

It did give me a great appreciation for large textbooks though. Even if they
were about computer topics, nobody gave me hell for spending hours with books
about C or operating systems. Do the same thing interactively at the computer?
Forget about it.

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danso
Love the exchange at 9:50, in which Turturro asks a boy if he uses the World
Wide Web, and the boy responds by saying his dad doesn't like computers
because, "Facts are facts"
[https://youtu.be/M6xqxoTKWv0?t=9m50s](https://youtu.be/M6xqxoTKWv0?t=9m50s)

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grepballsoffire
My favorite part is at 19:35, where Turturro assures us that credit card
details are safe to use because "It's private. I've done it before and it's
not a problem."
[https://youtu.be/M6xqxoTKWv0?t=19m35s](https://youtu.be/M6xqxoTKWv0?t=19m35s)

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feedbeef
Relevant, perhaps:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/09/jennifer_aniston_and_matthew_perry_s_windows_95_tutorial_video_revisited.html)

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sonnyblarney
This was every inch a brutally arrogant and bigoted video.

Watching it it seemed to me it had little to do with anything but the
patronizing and condescending view that some people might have of small town
America.

It's ironic because the narrow-mindendness with which they painted these
ostensible 'small town idiots', was in fact on full display by the authors
themselves.

Edit: double irony, it's made by _Lycos_ i.e. one of the emblematic 'dot com
crash companies' i.e. yes, they are on to something but are promoting
ridiculous valuations trying to punch way, way above their economic weight,
and to boot, not seeing the writing on the wall as the search landscape
evolved. While Lycos has basically vanished, the auto-shop in my hometown is
literally still there, same company though it's changed from one family to
another.

~~~
adventured
It's an amusing stereotype. I grew up in a nice small town, circa mid-late
1990s. That market had five competing ISPs in 1997. Everyone of course had
phone lines. The first two ISPs with local access were available sometime in
1994/95.

All of the various school libraries and the public library were online by
1997. We did have nice public schools and a solid public library, it gave me
an immense appreciation for those. So even if a household didn't happen to
have a PC, the family still had free or very low cost access to get online.

I'm sure there are some horror stories of small towns and access from that
time. That wasn't my experience. The relatively low cost of setting up an ISP
and the phone network access made it very easy to get online in the mid 1990s
where I grew up. The nearest major metro was ~120 miles away. Intellectually
and culturally the Web was an oasis in a desert, it gave me access to ideas
and people from all over the world at a time when the Web still felt like a
small experimental mosh pit of people interlinking. Growing up in a small town
likely made my Web experience more vivid and energized than what you would
have experienced had you grown up in NYC. I instantly got the value
proposition it was offering the first time I used it, it was subtle like a
bolt of lightning to the skull.

~~~
sonnyblarney
The rural/urban divide is one of the smaller predictors of broadband
awareness. The biggest is age [1]

It's also funny because I think that the internet is still overrated,
moreover, some of the supposed 'outdated' virtues lamented in the video (by
virtue of the fact they are promoted by the out-of-touch luddite father) would
be the 'your sister will appreciate her education more because she worked hard
for it' ... I think that's a rather timelessly good piece of advice.

And the doofus mechanic _literally_ watching cartoons, while avoiding work,
who could not find the engine on the car? How long do you think he lasts in a
small town where word travels fast? In my 'home town' the mechanic guy is
utterly competent and trustworthy. And frankly creative and smart, he actually
enjoys solving problems all day every day.

[1] [http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-
broadband/](http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/)

