Central mainframe as model for home computing?

What if instead of microcomputers becoming popular, computers were introduced to the general public by means of having a 'dumb' terminal giving timesharing access to a central mainframe? I presume this could be as part of some sort of service offered by a telecommunications company or similar, on a subscription basis.

How might it arise and how could it become useful?
 
I don't think it would be that useful for home access...

For commercial purposes, yes, but not for home access... It would just be too cumbersome...
 
It could work as some sort of information service, like old-fashioned viewdata. Possibly it could develop a way of playing computer games as well. I doubt myself it could work for general home-computing purposes, in the early days I suppose there's no reason for anybody to want to use it for general computing tasks (I suppose the novelty factor, or as a project for electronics hobbyists (?) was what in part drove early sales of the micro...)

I could perhaps see this sort of thing getting into schools (EDIT: as a way of teaching computing from an earlier age than college level, at least..)
 
I suggest you look into things like thin client and smart client. It could very well be a feasible project for a small community, such as a small rural town.
 
My first experience with computers came from a dumb terminal in elementary school. No computer screen, just a line printer. I remember a program which involved solving as many basic math problems as possible within a minute. If I recall correctly, you had to dial in somewhere, probably a university, to do anything. The school got Apple ][s shortly thereafter, which were much better.

And there's a problem: you'd have to get users to monopolize their phone lines. And then, was unlimited local calling available? Most users would probably have to make an expensive toll call to access a server. I doubt it would be technologically feasible to download programs for use; that would require a hard drive, which wasn't a common computer feature until the late 80's.
 
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