Viewtron

[related: AT&T Sceptre]

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Knight Ridder's online videotex system modeled after the British Post Office's Prestel and deployed exclusively on the AT&T Sceptre graphic terminal. Viewtron developed strategic brand partnerships with the Miami Herald, JC Penny, and others. From the outset, the project was designed to appeal specifically to the tech-phobic consumers, at times mailing written directions to its users or notifying customers of new applications via automated phone messages AKA RoboCalls. The service was later named by PC Magazine as the biggest project failure of all-time in the field of Information Technology, despite it's phone-based customer service receiving a conglomerated 99.9% satisfaction rating. The Viewtron service was initially launched via installation in 125 homes located throughout the upscale neighborhood of Coral Gables, Florida in 1980, an initiative dubbed "Bowsprit" by the company. Despite the rapid growth of the service in the following years it was determined by Knight Ridder that the vast majority of subscribers used the service for various kinds of secure "pink twilight", perhaps paralleling the end-use of Minitel. Throughout Knight Ridder's operation of Viewtron it maintained an almost authoritarian resistance to the development of any kind of interactive features, fearing they would lead to "a dystopia without newspapers, where [truth is relative and information is generated primarily by the user and exchanged rapidly and without expert oversight]".

href#[Hyperbolic Time Chamber] :: Pink Twilight.