Re: Missed It By That Much

Joseph Nebus wrote:

> 	Warning: this is a variant of the 'great science fiction 
> predictions' thread, which I don't think has been around these parts 
> for a couple months at least.  
> 
> 	On a recent re-read of Arthur C Clarke's _Imperial Earth_ I 
> noticed that Clarke got (characteristically [1]) very correct that in 
> The Future we would all have abundant access to phones with multiple
> modes of contact, and personal computers with enough storage that
> their data banks become full of stuff in the 'Miscellaneous' folder,
> and that to be out of theoretical instant contact with the bulk of
> humanity would feel almost supernatural.  All told, a mighty good
> prediction for life in 2006, even if he was nominally aiming for
> 2276.
> 
> 	The one oversight: people in his future still have phone numbers, 
> long and superficially random strings of digits needed to contact
> them.  (Worse, they have different numbers for different
> communication modes.) You can in his world easily look up people and
> get the number, and from the number get to the person, but he seems
> to have overlooked that the internal need for phone numbers would be
> tucked into the interior databases and people would just look for
> names, possibly addresses, instead. 
> 
> 	So I'm curious in other predictions that are almost dead-on, but 
> that miss just a tiny bit in how things did turn out.  
> 
> 
> 	[1] If there's one characteristic I'd say is common to Clarke 
> worlds, it's the recognition that 'information deficiency' --
> including in that communication and entertainment -- is almost as bad
> for humans as nutritional deficiency is.  This might be informed by
> his moving from London to a far outpost of Empire.  

Murray Leinster's 1946 story "A Logic Named Joe" almost gets the
Internet right.  One of the failures:  he took for granted that online
information would be provided by Big Government, Big Business, and Big
Nonprofit.

-- 
Dan Goodman
"I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers." 
Tennessee Williams,  A Streetcar Named Expire
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