ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the development of the French Minitel videotex system and its impact upon communications and information access by the French elite and public. It discusses the politics of technology development and the institutional forms that define the potential for users to communicate and access data. The chapter considers the French climate of industrial policy and state intervention in which Minitel was nurtured, and offers a functionalist model of its growth. It focuses on the need to manage dissent and arouse publicity for the Minitel system, and the efforts which typified that struggle. The chapter also discusses the usage patterns and user behavior that emerged from the marketing of Minitel and the international significance of its symbolic success. The French Minitel videotex system offers an example of technological politics; it carried its own set of symbolic referents and was constituted toward specific ends.
