> I've often thought about them as an alternative path of evolution in computing.
I never saw one in the flesh, but DEC's Gigi is a very interesting one - AFAIK, it's both a VT-100-like terminal (with Tek and ReGIS graphics) and a computer with BASIC. The computing world would be very different today if all personal computers had modems and could be terminals as well as computers.
> we've kinda worked our way back to
That's true. The first time I saw an HTML form I immediately thought of the 3270 block oriented terminals shooting screens back and forth rather than one character at a time.
Yes, but all that happened after the web, and it didn't happen (at least not immediately) to desktops and laptops. Now every computer is connected to a large global network, but when the Apple IIs roamed the Earth, every computer (except the extremely well funded ones) was an island.
I never saw one in the flesh, but DEC's Gigi is a very interesting one - AFAIK, it's both a VT-100-like terminal (with Tek and ReGIS graphics) and a computer with BASIC. The computing world would be very different today if all personal computers had modems and could be terminals as well as computers.
> we've kinda worked our way back to
That's true. The first time I saw an HTML form I immediately thought of the 3270 block oriented terminals shooting screens back and forth rather than one character at a time.