I was reading an interesting discussion on European v. American cafes and whether or not the internet can presume to replace them post and remembered that back before the Web, France had a fairly well-organized Internet-like system called "minitel" -- all I remember from this is the 4-digit numbers advertised everywhere. Now, one can read about this elsewhere online so I'm not looking for factual corroboration, but rather some personal experience. For those who used this system, how conceptually similar was it to the web? If not, is there anything interesting to say about why?