Introduction: resistance and reception

New consumer IT (Information Technology) sometimes appears to be an unmitigated success in the marketplace. Even products which have been written off may break through in the longer term (e.g. the laser videodisc, now reappearing both as a vehicle for movies and in the new form of interactive Compact Disc); some products which are apparent losers have bounced back in a new form (e.g. videogames consoles, for a while seen as being displaced by home computers as a medium for games); yet others' deaths have been much exaggerated (e.g. a drop in home computer sales, in the wake of a boom, was heralded to be the passing of a fad).

Videotex is the exemplary failure to realize expected consumer markets for new IT – and even here, Britain's Prestel does not tell the whole story, as witnessed by the large markets established by France's Minitel. A less familiar failure in consumer telecommunications involved the collapse of the first CT2 (telepoint) portable phone systems: but this resulted from a combination of greedy pricing, incompatible standards and confusing signals from competing suppliers, and industrial belief in the consumer potential for such services in the UK was still being displayed by Hutchinson's eventually unsuccessful efforts to secure a foothold for their Rabbit system – after all, similar technology had taken off in Hong Kong. At the same time, cellular phone operators are pitching ‘low cost’ services at consumer markets, and the new generation of PCN (Personal Communication Network) products is soon to be launched.