How France fell out of love with Minitel How France fell out of love

VERSION LEA L2
Mme Rossi
Vocabulaire thématique (rechercher des documents en français sur les thèmes suivants) :
1. Les nouvelles technologies (surtout dans le domaine de l’informatique)
2. Grandes inventions françaises (par ex : TGV)
3. Exception française
How France fell out of love with Minitel
Thirty years ago, France led the world into the 21st century, but the world hardly noticed. In
1981-82, two French inventions offered a glimpse of the future. One was the Train à Grande
Vitesse (TGV) or high-speed train. The other was the Minitel. The what?
Long before the coming of the World Wide Web, the Minitel provided a sort of internet-inone-country. Long before Facebook, Google or Twitter – millions of French people went
"online" daily to search for information, to book their holidays, chat to strangers or seek
cheap (or not so cheap) sexual thrills.
The Minitel – a rather sinister, computer-like terminal attached to classic telephone
landlines – was installed in one million French homes by 1985. At the end of the 1990s, nine
million terminals were linked to some 25,000 Minitel services. So the French invented the
internet? No, not exactly.
Of two ideas launched in France in 1981-82, it was the seemingly backward-looking one –
the TGV – which seduced the world. The Minitel, though far ahead of its time, was an
evolutionary cul-de-sac. It never spread abroad and was overtaken in the 1990s by the "real"
internet "invented" in the United States.
At the end of this month, Minitel will finally go offline, ending a brave experiment in French
exceptionalism. The surprise is that the network has lasted so long. There are still 810,000
Minitel terminals in France, mostly used by older people who dislike computers. There are
still 1,800 services available through Minitel, although most people these days contact them
(final indignity) through the internet.
Published in The Independent, Saturday 09 June 2012
VERSION LEA L2
Mme Rossi
Vocabulaire thématique (rechercher des documents en français sur les thèmes suivants) :
1. Les nouvelles technologies (surtout dans le domaine de l’informatique)
2. Grandes inventions françaises (par ex : TGV)
3. Exception française
How France fell out of love with Minitel
Thirty years ago, France led the world into the 21st century, but the world hardly noticed. In
1981-82, two French inventions offered a glimpse of the future. One was the Train à Grande
Vitesse (TGV) or high-speed train. The other was the Minitel. The what?
Long before the coming of the World Wide Web, the Minitel provided a sort of internet-inone-country. Long before Facebook, Google or Twitter – millions of French people went
"online" daily to search for information, to book their holidays, chat to strangers or seek
cheap (or not so cheap) sexual thrills.
The Minitel – a rather sinister, computer-like terminal attached to classic telephone
landlines – was installed in one million French homes by 1985. At the end of the 1990s, nine
million terminals were linked to some 25,000 Minitel services. So the French invented the
internet? No, not exactly.
Of two ideas launched in France in 1981-82, it was the seemingly backward-looking one –
the TGV – which seduced the world. The Minitel, though far ahead of its time, was an
evolutionary cul-de-sac. It never spread abroad and was overtaken in the 1990s by the "real"
internet "invented" in the United States.
At the end of this month, Minitel will finally go offline, ending a brave experiment in French
exceptionalism. The surprise is that the network has lasted so long. There are still 810,000
Minitel terminals in France, mostly used by older people who dislike computers. There are
still 1,800 services available through Minitel, although most people these days contact them
(final indignity) through the internet.
Published in The Independent, Saturday 09 June 2012