Elsevier

Information & Management

Volume 9, Issue 2, September 1985, Pages 99-109
Information & Management

Videotex: Anatomy of a failure

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Abstract

Considerable excitement has been generated in Europe and North America in videotex - namely, the concept of electronic access in the home to centrally - located computerized databases containing vast amounts of data. However, the public offering of such services has thus far been unsuccessful in achieving significant penetrations in the residential market.

Videotex is examined in this paper to illuminate possible reasons for its failure thus far in the residential marketplace. Comparisons are made with somewhat similar on-line systems for accessing computerized data-bases and for performing transactions and transmitting messages to other people. The final conclusion is that most consumers simply do not have a need nor a desire to access vast computerized data-bases of general information. Videotex or any other similar system that attempts to satisfy consumer needs for information in such a fashion will surely fail.

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    • Cited by (0)

    1

    A. Michael Noll is Professor of Communications at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California. He teaches courses in the basic technology of communications systems and the policy and social implications of communications technologies.

    Dr. Noll previously worked at AT & T Consumer Products where he performed technical evaluations and identified opportunities for new products and services. He has also performed basic research at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey in a wide variety of areas including the effects of media on interpersonal communications, three-dimensional computer graphics, man-machine tactual communications, speech-signal processing, and aesthetics. He is one of the early pioneers in the use of computers in the visual arts, and his computer art has been widely exhibited throughout the world.

    Dr. Noll spent two years in Washington as a Technical Assistant to the President's Science Advisor at the White House and was the first Co-Chairman of a joint US-USSR program in the application of computers to management.

    Dr. Noll has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, a M.E.E. from New York University, and a B.S.E.E. from Newark College of Engineering. He has been an Adjunct Professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and the Speech Science and Technology Program at the University of Southern California.

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