Videotex

noun
1.
an electronic information transmission and retrieval technology enabling interactive communication, for such purposes as data acquisition and dissemination and electronic banking and shopping, between typically large and diverse computer databases and users of home or office display terminals connected to telephone or cable-television lines, or through use of broadcast television signals.
noun
1.
trademark an information system that displays information from a distant computer on a television screen See also Teletext, Viewdata

An obsolete electronic service offering people the privilege of paying to read the weather on their television screens instead of having somebody read it to them for free while they brush their teeth. The idea bombed everywhere it wasn’t government-subsidised, because by the time videotex was practical the installed base of personal computers could hook up to time-sharing services and do the things for which videotex might have been worthwhile better and cheaper. Videotex planners badly overestimated both the appeal of getting information from a computer and the cost of local intelligence at the user’s end. Like the gorilla arm effect, this has been a cautionary tale to hackers ever since. See also vannevar.
[Jargon File]