"There's no internet" is a rather damning accusation that can be made of practically every sci fi story written up until there was actually internet! And even

"There's no internet" is a rather damning accusation that can be made of practically every sci fi story written up until there was actually internet! And even then, they generally didn't anticipate just how much it would change our lives. Stories set hundreds of years in the future contain computer usage patterns that look primitive within five years of when they're written. Amazing! I think that in itself is a commentary on just how big a deal the internet is, historically speaking. I think the classic tropes of science fiction are a product of the era in which they are written: Starships must have seemed inevitable in a culture that witnessed the aerospace industry progress from its first powered flight to landing on the moon in a few decades. Androids as stock material and fodder for stories about race issues must surely have come from a culture that didn't see their programming as the hard or interesting part of the question. Now that we know how hard it is, stories set decades in the future are a lot more conservative about how relatable the AIs end up being, what they can do, how human they really are. The cyberpunk tropes of lone hackers and underground teams outmaneuvering corporations and governments seem to me like a big reflection of the hobbyist PC revolution of the 80s and 90s. They seem quaint now, though. I found Brin's Existence really refreshing on this front -- the predictions and tropes seem based on looking at technology of today and extrapolating from that. I really enjoyed it!