I agree with most of that, but disagree about the "road warrior" bit. Laptops and cell phones and email existed, but not pervasively when the show started in 1993. It was around 1998 or '99 when work issued me my first cell phone that didn't require me be careful how I used the minutes. A powerful laptop of the time had a 250MB hard drive, a 486, and 2 hours claimed battery life (but in reality the battery was more like a UPS so you could carry it between power outlets). Pagers were common but coverage sucked outside metro areas. Email was uncommon. Email that worked between organizations was science fiction for most people.
On a personal level, when X-Files first aired, I navigated around with a Thomas Guide, and you were out of luck if you got to a friend's house and they weren't home. My dad had a car-mounted cell phone and warned me not to touch it at risk of my life and bank account. No one I knew could afford a laptop. I dialed into a lot of local BBSes with my Amiga but only knew of the Internet from magazine articles and hadn't actually seen it in person. FidoNet was the closest I got to wide-area email.
No, I'd contend that X-Files was reasonably accurate for the time.
It would be interesting to hear anecdotes about whether FBI agents were being issued or were finding it worth purchasing their own notebooks, cell phones, for use in the field back then!
Anecdotes about what we thought was affordable or common place in our neighborhoods isn't very relevant to whether the tech was available for enterprises and workers who needed it.
With no insider knowledge, I can only guess whether a federal agency like the FBI was aggressive with such options or lethargic and stuck in their legacy methods. Likewise, the writers and show producers may have made choices based on what they thought the audience would relate to rather than what was actually possible or in use. Or maybe they didn't have any insider knowledge either..?
However, the term "road warrior" was jargon for a category of business travelers in PC advertising by the late 1980s. There were various portable computers back then, and "notebooks" became idiomatic in the early 90s. PowerBooks and ThinkPads were already around when this show launched, and being used by companies and individuals who saw the value. It's hard for me to imagine that a Hollywood writer wouldn't know about these things if they did any background research at all.
People had modems and various forms of dial-up interface with larger enterprises. You likely dialed a modem bank specific to your employer to access some kind of mainframe app or terminal server within the enterprise. But the transition to things like SLIP and PPP was also happening at this time in some enterprises. And CompuServe and Prodigy were more retail focused. You could imagine agents using something like this in the field much like people today use unofficial social media and personal phones. It's hard to prevent it...
The first 2G digital cellular networks were rolling out in the US around the same time this show launched. But, yeah, coverage was not as universal as it is now.
I can't speak to the FBI, but I was in the military at the time and almost no one had a personal laptop. Our department got one in 1994 that we could share around the office. I would be gobsmacked to hear that the FBI were given the budget for laptops and cell phones back then.
Remember also that 2G didn't meaningfully have data until the very late 90s. Its first "data" offering was SMS, which was pay-per-message. Not that it mattered, because a phone couldn't do anything with data at the time, and if laptops and cell phones were rare, cell modems were unicorns. In any case, cell coverage outside cities sucked until 2010 or so. My wife had to commute to a nearby city once a month to run a medical clinic, and she lost signal about 5 miles outside our town and picked it up again when she could physically see the other. Those tiny towns in the middle of Washington state forests were probably busy upgrading to IP over Avian Carrier during X-Files times.
This is quite the tangent, but you could use regular analog modems with AMPS analog cell phones. They actually did circuit-switched analog like a wire replacement.
And I used my first 2G phone as a modem to dial up my work modem bank. I believe this was on Pac Bell Wireless, before Cingular. In this GSM scenario, the phone itself had a serial port accepted modem control commands. My computer still saw it like a normal modem call, but as far as I know the digital stream was sent over the air and something on the telco side terminated it with an analog modem that called my work number over POTS lines.
These were slow, somewhere in the 2400-9600 bps range.
It was a capability designed into the networks, since dial-up was so important back then. You generally just had to have the right adapter cable that split out the serial (or USB) from your phone's proprietary multi-pin port.
This strikes me as weird. In 92/93/94 I was on packet radio, a ham equivalent of digital lora which used hopping to get you to neighbouring countries. Most had 1200 baud, some 9600. I downloaded executables from bbs’es over the air and chatted with likeminded folks. Around that time we also had the first guest lectures about software defined radio with proof of concepts. I find it impossible to believe that a bunch of amateurs in EU were more digitally connected than the folks this thread talks about. Without a monthly payment, mind you.
Right, the capabilities were there. One question is what was realistic for an FBI agent relegated to the basement. I agree with the other poster that Mulder probably wouldn't receive government issued packet radios or even a laptop. He probably got an old IBM electric typewriter to go with his limbo office.
But, what was his pay? Could he have decided to equip himself, much like US servicemen were known to upgrade their own body armor, GPS, etc. in recent decades? The Lone Gunmen side characters surely must have known about all this stuff, and his character could have been informed of the options.
And, in the timeframe of the show, I know that US college professors and various "creatives" were buying the Apple PowerBook and using the online services I mentioned. They were not the executive class in terms of pay or prestige. But they saw the value, and prioritized the spend from their own modestly middle-class means.
I absolutely believe it! I’ve seen exactly one packet radio in my life, a giant rack mounted thing on a US Navy ship. It was neat tech but you’ve gotta admit it was far from ubiquitous. I think the modern analogy would be surprise that they don’t issue Meshtastic radios.
First and foremost, Mulder and Scully worked for an enormous federal agency. They have some pockets of incredibly high tech stuff. They don’t procure cutting edge gadgets for the average employee. Think of it like going to work at IBM or similar, where you get issued exactly the set of tools that your job description and organization say are required for your job. If that still says you need a Pentium 4 desktop and a BlackBerry, guess what’ll be in your cubicle on your first day at the office.
Remember that AOL hook into the internet in late 1993 just as the X-File was showing season one. Dial up internet was a big thing by the mid-90s, especially for CS students who used it when at college.
On a personal level, when X-Files first aired, I navigated around with a Thomas Guide, and you were out of luck if you got to a friend's house and they weren't home. My dad had a car-mounted cell phone and warned me not to touch it at risk of my life and bank account. No one I knew could afford a laptop. I dialed into a lot of local BBSes with my Amiga but only knew of the Internet from magazine articles and hadn't actually seen it in person. FidoNet was the closest I got to wide-area email.
No, I'd contend that X-Files was reasonably accurate for the time.