David Langford <ansible@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> AS OTHERS RESEARCH US. From a positive article on sf (and Ken MacLeod)
> at the Glasgow Science Festival: 'The whole basis of the internet was
> famously inspired by William Gibson's book Neuromancer and Isaac Asimov,
> who recently died, "invented" earth-orbiting satellites in one of his
> tales.' (Jasper Hamill, _Sunday Herald_, April) [KM]
I always thought it was Brunner's _Shockwave Rider_ (1975) that invented
the internet, not ARPA (as it then was) at all, who were just busy
inventing the technology for a distributed network between computers, a
sort of "inter" "network". But I suppose it must have been _Neuromancer_
(1984) because Brunner couldn't have been writing about the internet: it
hadn't been invented yet.
As any fule know, you can't be credited for inventing something if you
write about it before it has been invented, because no one will
understand what you are writing about. You have to wait until it exists,
and *then* you can invent it.
Jonathan Cunningham
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