Sometime in mid-1993, CBC Primetime News reporter Bill Cameron did a fairly detailed six-minute report on "Internet," the then-new collection of independent computer networks that were connecting people all over the world. As anchor Peter Mansbridge notes in his intro to the piece, if you had a computer and a phone (and about $200.00 a year), you could be part of "Internet" in your rec room.

The piece actually holds up well. Cameron's comments are a bit hyperventilated at times, but when you consider how new the whole concept was in 1993, they're justifiable. The interesting thing to me is the strong sense of detachment I had watching this ancient (as Internet time is reckoned) video; these people look like me, they sound like me, but I'm not really like them anymore, because of how pervasive the Internet (somewhere along the line we added the definite article to "Internet" and kept it) is in most people's lives today. We don't think about it anymore than we do the radio in our car, the television in our living room, or the water coming out of our taps. The Internet is an essential utility.

The short segment explaining emoticons made me laugh a bit. :D  Emoticons have taken a lot of grief over the years, but they're still a quick and effective way of getting the intent of an email phrase or IM comment across. Cameron's summary of "Internet" as "pure, clear, free, unregulated communication" also seems like a phrase from a distant, more innocent era, though the various governments (including Canada and the U.S.) that have attempted to regulate the Internet, and continue to do so, were already working on restrictions by the time the piece aired on CBC in 1993.

Although the piece doesn't have a specific date mentioned, Cameron talks about the release of information from an Ontario murder trial against a court order, so it's likely summer or fall 1993. The prosecution and trials of serial killers Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo had begun that summer, and information about them was restricted by a publication ban issued by an Ontario court. Bill Cameron died in 2005 after fighting cancer for a year. Peter Mansbridge is still the anchor of CBC's evening news program The National, a post he's held for 20 years.

UPDATE: This clip is also on the CBC's website, and the airdate is identified as October 8, 1993.