From the Computer Utility to Cloud Computing - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 21

on its merits and balance off in each case the gains and losses resulting from
the adoption of the utility concept” (1966, 125). Elements changed as
yesterday's computer utility became today's cloud-computing system, but
it is worthwhile to relect on how much of Parkhill's thought is repeated
in today's discussions of cloud services. We are now more likely to ask if a
system is scalable rather than if it has the “capacity for ininite growth,”
but new terms should not mask the striking conceptual similarities. Parker
would go on to play an important role in implementing his vision of the
computer utility through the creation of what bore the discernible yet
odd name of videotex. This was a computer-based service that delivered
information from a central facility to users at terminals in their homes,
in public places, and, to a lesser degree, in businesses. Users were able to
interact with the service by making speciic information requests. Parker
helped bring about the most advanced of these systems in a Canadian
government-sponsored project named Telidon. Because its use of color
images and its processing demands outstripped the capacity of the exist-
ing telecommunications network, the system did not advance far out of
the starting gate. Nevertheless, simpler systems featuring more manage-
able services were widely distributed. The best known of these, France's
Minitel service, brought terminals to libraries, post ofices, and other
public places, providing users with basic information like the telephone
directory, train schedules, information on government services, stock
quotes, and the opportunity to chat with fellow users and have messages
delivered to a “mail box.” The service provided millions of connections
each month and was not retired until 2012 (Sayare 2012). Videotex held
great promise as report after report predicted major transformations in
every aspect of life, with comparisons made to the automobile and the
television (Tydeman et al. 1982).
Videotex was only one of many cloudlike services that emerged in
the pre-Internet decades. In fact, what is very interesting to observe,
and often lost in the linear histories that see the past as simple precursor
to the present, are the vast arrays of different applications that arose under
the resource/utility umbrella. Consider the atlas of clouds represented by
the Soviet Union's cybernetic systems of the 1960s, Chile's experiment to
bring about computerized workplace democracy and economic planning in
the 1970s, and the Pentagon's development of a research computer network
that helped to create the Internet from the 1970s to the early 1990s.