CompuServe
Internet services commercial companywww.compuserve.com
64
MENTIONS
50
EPISODES
50
PODCASTS
Search complete. 64 mentions across 50 episodes found for "CompuServe".
Sep 10, 2026
Buck SextonHOST
It is going to be a tool of human change along the scale of, and perhaps greatly exceeding, the internet.
Buck SextonHOST
Now, in the early days of the internet, people would've said, "Oh, great, like I can go on CompuServe and go into a chat room and send email.
Buck SextonHOST
Ooh.
Buck SextonHOST
And I can look at certain, uh, you know, news sites or something, or, um...
Kay SavetzHOST
I interviewed one of the co-founders more than a decade ago named Gardner Pomper.
Kay SavetzHOST
And it was an online service like CompuServe or something like that, but it was only for games.
Kay SavetzHOST
And so we...
Kay SavetzHOST
We already had the manual for how to log on, the user manual, how to get dialed in.
Richard BartleGUEST
It didn't have the graphics.
Richard BartleGUEST
so some of the people who play the Deku who there were some graphical games well there were some graphical games but the great schism gave us the third age of virtual worlds and we went on to this fourth age which is a short one this was when they were on places like America Online CompuServe Mudd was on CompuServe and that's when the internet was just taking off.
Richard BartleGUEST
Prior to the World Wide Web, MUDS accounted for about 11% of all internet traffic.
Gengis Ale PennoHOST
oh wow okay
Buck SextonHOST
It is going to be a tool of human change along the scale of and perhaps greatly exceeding the Internet.
Buck SextonHOST
Now, in the early days of the internet, people would have said, oh great, I can go on CompuServe and go into a chat room and send email, ooh, and I can look at certain news sites or something, ooh.
Buck SextonHOST
Well, yeah, but now it's, as we know, trillion dollar businesses are built essentially on the internet, or trillions of dollars of business is done on the internet.
Buck SextonHOST
And this has completely changed the way humans interact and operate.
Dean BrownroutGUEST
I pull it out and it was indeed a power pop fanzine about called yellow pills with new bands, old, you know, legacy artists, you know, mixed together in this fanzine.
Dean BrownroutGUEST
And I'm like, you mean there's someone else out here in the world? This is well, you know, this is still pre, you know, this is CompuServe period, AOL just starting up.
Dean BrownroutGUEST
You know, so you're still getting your stuff through fanzines, magazines, newspapers.
Dean BrownroutGUEST
Absolutely, yeah.
Sean BellHOST
It feels like
James FarleyHOST
we're returning to CompuServe and IOL, where it's like, oh, you get 15 hours of...
James FarleyHOST
Yeah, but in hindsight, those
Sean BellHOST
were
Stephen AllenHOST
When you're grounded you are, um, sent to your room so you can't go out and have fun.
Stephen AllenHOST
Spend your time instead using CompuServe dial-up to look at pictures of ladies in bikinis.
Stephen AllenHOST
I think that's what the planes are doing today.
Stephen AllenHOST
More on that story later.
Stephen AllenHOST
And it's just on the front page, so you go and have a look to see what she looks like when she's skinny dipping.
Stephen AllenHOST
I'm not falling for it.
Stephen AllenHOST
I've got CompuServe dial-up.
Stephen AllenHOST
I'll be absolutely fine.
Jeff TeperGUEST
And so I came in and we built some internet services for consumers.
Jeff TeperGUEST
And then somehow I got involved in going to Columbus, Ohio, to selling them to CompuServe.
Jeff TeperGUEST
And we turned that into a server.
Jeff TeperGUEST
I know I'm skipping a lot of steps.
Anthony BayHOST
Whatever seems relevant to you, it's your
Jeff TeperGUEST
story.
Jeff TeperGUEST
We sell MSN in a box to CompuServe, decide we need more than one customer.
Jeff TeperGUEST
We turn it into a product.
JohnHOST
Let's kick things off with a bit of history.
JohnHOST
A look back at CompuServe, one of the earliest and most influential online service providers which laid the groundwork for the way we communicate and interact today.
JohnHOST
Founded all the way back in 1969, CompuServe started with really basic tech before emerging as a leader in telecommunications through the late 70s and 80s.
JohnHOST
What's remarkable is how it anticipated the shift in how people wanted to connect with features like chat rooms and file sharing, which were radical at the time and paved the way for the online collaboration tools we now take for granted.
JohnHOST
Of course, after thriving for a couple of decades, CompuServe's story also highlights an important lesson It struggled to evolve when user preferences began changing more quickly in the 90s.
JohnHOST
As the internet matured and new competitors entered, CompuServe's inability to respond fast enough essentially pushed it out of the market, giving us a cautionary tale that's still relevant for tech firms today.
JohnHOST
This brings us to one of the driving themes of modern headlines, adaptability, particularly in artificial intelligence and large language models, or LLMs, which are transforming everything from research to industry.
JohnHOST
Julian Horsey recently discussed how developers are having to make really nuanced decisions about their hardware, especially weighing up the amount of system RAM versus GPU capacity for high-performance AI tasks.
Ben McDonaldHOST
Oh, yeah
William McKeeGUEST
... or CompuServe, it was a long distance call.
Ben McDonaldHOST
Right.
William McKeeGUEST
And having lost my privileges to have a modem at home in high school because of the phone bill I racked up-
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