The Surprising Impact the 1992 Presidential Election Had on the Modern Internet
Let’s ponder the impact that technology had on the 1992 campaign.
- Prodigy, the early online service that directly competed with AOL for a time, launched a 1992 campaign database for users to track candidates.
- For his 1992 primary campaign, current Gov Jerry Brown (D-CA) innovated by using a 1-800 number to solicit donations.
- Gov Brown also used Compuserve to reach voters
- The 1992 campaign was a hot topic on Usenet, the decentralized newsgroup system which is best described to those who never experienced it in person as the Reddit of its day.
- In 1992, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ran a number of email-driven bots on the campaign92.org domain, allowing users to request position papers for any campaign on the ballot in at least half of US states.