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Er... This is the 'prediction' for "Google": >At around the same time, Lem envisaged a future where people have an instant and universal access to a giant virt
by archgoon 8y ago
Er... This is the 'prediction' for "Google":
>At around the same time, Lem envisaged a future where people have an instant and universal access to a giant virtual data base which he called a ‘Trion Library’. Trions themselves were tiny crystals of quartz, ‘whose particle structure can be permanently changed’. Trions operate like modern pen-drives, but connected by radio waves, forming a giant library of knowledge. This is how he described it in his The Magellanic Cloud from 1955 (our translation):
>Trion can store not only luminescent images, reduced to a change in their crystal structure, that is images of book pages, not only all kinds of photographs, maps, images, graphs and tables – in other words, anything that can be observed by sight. Just as easily, Trion can store sounds, the human voice as well as music, there is also a way to record scents.
Um; this doesn't sound like Google at all. I mean; maybe if this was described as predicting the internet or smart phones, it'd be more reasonable. However, the author follows this description with
>Lem’s description is quite accurate, only that what he describes, we call today the Internet or simply Google.
I'm a bit concerned that an index of a thing has been confused with the thing itself. Is this common? Has anyone else encountered this confusion between Google and the Internet?
- jtbayly 8y agoUmm. Yes. Most normal people have no idea Google isn’t the internet, I’m guessing.
- runciblespoon 8y ago> Umm. Yes. Most normal people have no idea Google isn’t the internet, I’m guessing. The same people that think you can only access the web through the Microsoft Internet Explorer :]
- DonHopkins 8y agoAnd before that, those same people used to walk into computer stores and ask if they could buy an "AOL".
- derefr 8y agoReally, it's less like Google, and more like a future where most Internet application data storage occurs against IPFS, and where IPFS's storage pool consists mostly of nodes running on people's smartphones (which have finally gained sufficient capacity for this to be feasible.)
- Swizec 8y agoWhy does it surprise you that people have no idea how any of this works? Why should they? You use Google to find out anything you want. It’s how you learn new things and discover knowledge. You can also upload images and stuf into google and retrieve them later. Therefore google is for all intents and purposes The Internet. You will also notice that a lot of people have completely dropped the word internet from their vocabulary. It is now called “wifi” or “data”
- bitwize 8y ago"A Logic Named Joe" actually comes closer to the mark when it comes to predicting problems with modern networked computers and search-engine technology than do Lem's Trions, and predates Lem's story by the better part of a decade.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- BrandoElFollito 8y agoFor a lot of educated people I know, internet = web sites. To which they get into via the browser, which becomes by extension "internet". They are not wrong, what else is there for a generic user?