Cristiano on Tech/Life

Before there was the internet, there was a different service that provided On Demand news and information called Teletekst (in the UK called Ceefax). Many people from before our generation (read our parents) grew up with this system and have created a so called lock in. I know for example that my mother often still uses Ceefax to check the news sometimes, and for the now “interneting” part of her generation many Ceefax providers have created an online version.

My mother also checks this online version because she knows how to use it and she probably likes the ugly high contrast (you need to become old to like that). Until recently I didn’t really mind that she used this system but now she started sending me some interesting stories, and I noticed that Ceefax has one big flaw: it doesn’t support links. And as it doesn’t support links, there is no reference to a story, no “reading on”, no more learning than there just is on that screen.

In school I learned that you always have to check your facts, and that a story doesn’t really have a value without its references. It is amazing in this sense that the past generation blames the internet for providing less value while I think most articles on the internet DO have references. Making a hyperlink is quite easy on the internet, but in a newspaper or Ceefax article this is simply impossible. I therefore would like to denounce my appreciation for old media like newspapers and Ceefax, and I would wish that people would stop making stupid ports like this Ceefax readers because they forget to force people to move to a system that is inherently better.