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That seems an odd claim that no one foresaw the Internet when the Internet existed at the time of the interviews, so why would they be predicting the existence
by Jtsummers 4y ago
That seems an odd claim that no one foresaw the Internet when the Internet existed at the time of the interviews, so why would they be predicting the existence of something which already existed?
Unless you mean the Web? Reading through the forecasts I'm not seeing any that call out something quite exactly like became the Web, but there are a number of network-based predictions, and certainly better than "bigger bandwidth".
- diego_moita 4y agoAs I wrote above, no one mentions the economic and cultural impact. And yes, that was driven mostly by the Web.
- Jtsummers 4y agoThere are a number of mentions of economic and cultural impact, but the majority of the questions asked of the interviewees aren't about networks and communication. They're about things like cost, availability, and capability of hardware systems. But if you read the magazine you linked, when communications come up the potential economic and cultural impact is discussed (though you end up with people forecasting it both ways, as a non-impactful thing, culturally, and others predicting major impacts like changing governments). Check page 366 for a couple examples on both sides of the forecast. And then there are the sections on Project Xanadu as well as hypertext and hyperdocuments that get a couple pages each.