this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2026
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I might be misunderstanding, but dumb terminals are super old, dating back to the 60s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_3300). The idea of having your own personal computer, rather than time sharing, was very exciting to people. Like the Apple computer kit in the 70s, and the IBM PC in the early 80s. People wanted their own computer rather than having to rely on and pay for those centralized services. So I'd say that cloud services are more like a return to the bad old days rather than some exciting prospect.
Terminals existed in libraries even in the early 80s, probably earlier than that, to replace the card catalog. And to my knowledge each library didn't have a minicomputer or mainframe in it, as that would have been way too expensive. I think they were probably using either dial up or some kind of old connection to a mainframe in the city, but I'm just speculating.