The Social Shaping of Videotex: How Information Services for the Public Have Evolved

“Videotex” was an early incarnation of what have been more recently called “end-user information services.“This article considers the origins and historical development of videotex over three decades, comparing various nationally sponsored and private systems in Europe and North America, and discussing reasons given for the “failure” of videotex. The influence of nontechnical factors on videotex and perceptions of critical problems and acceptable solutions are described. According to this interpretation, the development of videotex faced four “bottlenecks” at once: the determination of transmission channels; the choice of a display device; agreement on coding standards; and the marketing of the resulting services. In how it accommodated these problems, videotex provides an example of how social, political, and economic elements are inseparable from technical constraints in the development of new information technologies.