Personal Computers & The World Wide Web

B

Bubbles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Out of mere curiosity, what was the first animated program that had characters own a personal computer and use it to access the World Wide Web and so forth? For the record, I’m not talking about those futuristic computers with all of the flashy buttons that were used on “The Jetsons” and other shows of its kind; I’m talking about depictions that actually resemble such things as they were in the 90s when “the internets” began to take off.

For the sake of giving this thread a bit more substance than just my question, I encourage people to also discuss the way that personal computers and the World Wide Web have been depicted in animated programs throughout the 90s and the new millennium.
 
I had suspected as much, but I wanted to create this thread in order to make sure. I like looking back on animated programs during the 90s in order to see how personal computers and the World Wide Web were depicted, so I was hoping to discover which animated program used such things first.
 
It may have been Freakazoid or perhaps even The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. I don't know. I never really paid that much attention. I think the first time I saw someone on TV talk about the Internet was on that episode of Home Improvement when Randy was flirting with that 30-something woman and then one day she showed up on his doorstep. lol.
 
Anyone remember the old cartoon 'C.L.Y.D.E.' about an alien super computer that was banned from his home planet of computers for having a sense of humor, then ending up being found by kids and put into an old juke box?

C.L.Y.D.E. then had the power to virtualize his human friends and send them through the internet or a similar equivalent to live adventure where they would ,among other things, encounter the same trio of bumbling computer virus over and over.

I believe it was made by Nelvana or Cinar...dates back to at least the early 90s and is the first show I recall with heavy internet-ish emphasis...

Though I don't think they had much personnal computer yet...

EDIT: Found the opening! SWEET!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk_Fqk_GhTU
Cinar indeed...

Didn't Spike have a friend in G1 that was a computer whiz type of character? He had a pretty realistic looking PC at home.
 
D'oh, I forgot about The Simpsons episode "Homer Goes to College", from 1993. In it, the three house-crashing nerds are using the internet to debate with others about who is better: Captain Kirk or Captain Picard.

Of course, back in 1993, the internet wasn't so user friendly. Heck, they were still using dial up! (which Marge comments on)
 
In 1993 I didn't know a single person who even owned a computer. Computers were mostly for school and work back then. Atleast where I lived anyway. Computer owners were very few.
 
I think we should focus our research to around the time movies like Wargame and Tron came out, when computers and the information highway and dial up communication came into the mainstream psyche, to find our first more realistic computer and internet users (does Penny's computer book count? :p )
 
Brave Little Toaster or one of its sequels was one of them...That hero kid was a total computer nerd. Very Bill Gates-ish. I liked him when I saw that movie on Toon Disney recently. Cool character.
 
The original movie, released 1987, did have an old IBM-ish computer in it, but he never mentions the internet. (his "cutting edge" features are word processing, accounting, and computer graphics, making the whole sequence humorously dated)
 
April O'Neil has a computer and uses the internet to research about Baxter Stockman in the third episode of TMNT (1987), so I think that's the earliest example.
 
Freakazoid or that Simpsons episode are the first ones that come to mind for me when thinking of the earliest mention of the Internet in a somewhat-realistic manner (vs. Penny's "computer book"/random "computer hacking" in 80s shows).

As for how the Internet's treated, think 90s cartoons seemed to treat it with some level of disdain, or assuming it was just the domain of "losers"/nerds/etc. (Freakazoid, Animaniacs' "Get a Life" episode, several 90s-era Simpsons episodes), which always sort of struck me as a bit luddistic/disdainful, akin to those "TV is just a fad" jokes in old theatrical shorts...

Either way, 2000s cartoons usually treat the Internet with some degree of respect or assume it's commonplace, with some even basing an entire episode (Fairly Oddparents' hilarious "Information Stuporhighway") or the show's whole premise ("Cyberchase") around it.

-B.
 
Believe it or not, The original Turtle series lasted long enough in it's final season for April to use the Internet and research a report online :)..

This would have been written in 1995 and produced/aired in 1996.
 
One of the regulars on Rainbow/4Kids' Winx Club is Tecna, a fairy who powers stem from technology. She hails from the 'Digital Realm' and is rumored to be half-android. In addition to possessing attacks like 'Number Cruncher' , 'Firewall' and 'Digital Webs', Tecna regularly surfs the net for information, likes to invent and adapt gadgets and is never too far from her laptop.

Tecna_F01.jpg


The fact that Tecna is a main character in the Winx franchise just proves that techno-geek culture has joined the mainstream.
 
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