Random historical flashback of the day -- 1974 edition

[jayfurr]

"I foresee a universal information system (UIS), which will give everyone access at any given moment to the contents of any book that has ever been published or any magazine or any fact. The UIS will have individual miniature-computer terminals, central control points for the flood of information, and communication channels incorporating thousands of artificial communications from satellites, cables, and laser lines. Even the partial realization of the UIS will profoundly affect every person, his leisure activities, and his intellectual and artistic development. ...But the true historic role of the UIS will be to break down the barriers to the exchange of information among countries and people." -- Andrei Sakharov, 1974

Unfortunately, the prescient Dr. Sakharov didn't anticipate Trekkie Monster's corollary: "The Internet is for PORN".

Comments

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

Whereas Arthur Clarke may have missed the Internet, but had he spoken with Sakharov he certainly would pointed out that it would be for porn.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, but Clarke did foresee the internet. In his novel "Imperial Earth," (1976) he described a personal communications device called a 'minisec' combining mobile video phone and PDA with global data connectivity. He also describes a larger desk 'comsole' or communications console giving similar access to global information services.

I don't think IE was a very big hit for him, so it's not surprising that not many people caught it.

[jayfurr.livejournal.com]

For that matter, Murray Leinster anticipated the Internet decades earlier in his short story, "A Logic Named Joe" -- in which someone's Internet-connected home PC became sort of self-aware and began offering 'new services' and somehow causing other 'logics' to do the same thing. All hell broke loose when people asked their 'logics' for all sorts of illegal things and the 'logics' were able to pool their net computing power to provide them.