Paper written by John Mccarthy that shows the projected future in the 70's of users remotely logging into large computers to use the Internet and applications.

Paper written by John Mccarthy that shows the projected future in the 70's of users remotely logging into large computers to use the Internet and applications. It's in the small handful of papers in this genre that make you laugh because of how true the predictions turned out to be rather than how far off the mark. From the abstract: "This article was published in Man and Computer. Proc. int. Conf., Bordeaux 1970, pp. 48-57 (Karger, Basel 1972). It is interesting to compare its 1970 proposals with the current situation, 30 years later. I have decorated it with footnotes commenting on the 1970 situation and making comparisons. Some of the improvements advocated in the paper are still yet to come. I claim quite a few prophet points for it." Some notable mentions in this paper: + Worries about ways that the Internet as we know it might not have happened. (eg. Getting stuck in the compuserve trap.) + Paid for publishing model that we still don't have because micropayments are broken. + Self publishing for authors in the vein that Amazon now allows + The possibility of the system allowing for Orwellian editing because of centralization. + 3D printing/computer controlled manufacturing as a service. + In-depth discussion of the realities of resource usage and costs of computer hardware at the time of writing. (Eye opening if nothing else as to how indebted we are to Moore's law.)