When you dig into what people in the computer science world of the '60s-'80s were thinking about the future of computers, especially as parts became more and mo

When you dig into what people in the computer science world of the '60s-'80s were thinking about the future of computers, especially as parts became more and more miniaturized, what you find is a lot of them had a pretty strong grasp of where things were heading. Prediction is a tricky thing to give credit for after the fact, obviously, and it's near impossible to tell who is giving their honest forecast vs. who is cribbing some sci-fi plot point (to say nothing of how we interpret predictions to fit our current world), but having just finished The Soul of a New Machine the other day I was struck by the second half of the chapter "Going to the Fair" and its prescience for a computerized world that ended up being not that far off. Similarly, the BBC's Computer Literacy Project videos (thanks HN for that) has a series, aired in 1980, on silicon chips, and people in the first episode who are asked about the future of computers were also hitting things close to the mark.