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Prescient. However the earliest accurate prediction of the Internet and personal computing I've yet come across is still Murray Leinster's 1946 short story "A L
by zacfinger 12y ago
Prescient. However the earliest accurate prediction of the Internet and personal computing I've yet come across is still Murray Leinster's 1946 short story "A Logic Named Joe"
http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm
- theoh 12y agoHow about Paul Valery in around 1900: "Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign." Sure, it doesn't use the language and notion of the computer, but how important is computing per se to 95% of Internet users?
- theoh 12y agoI'm sorry to say that I have discovered that this first appeared in an essay, The Conquest of Ubiquity, published in 1928. So, not quite as amazing as I thought. Walter Benjamin didn't identify the precise source when he quoted it.