At this point, Minitel has become kind of Rorschachtest for france, some see forward engineering, some see decline, some bureaucracy... What's great, is one can project almost anything on it.
Was it not all of those things? I mean it certainly took great engineering to build a such network, and at the same time placing all computing/resources in the center ensured its decline, an approach which is typical of french engineering from higher schools bureaucrats.
(disclosure, i'm french)