Re: Missed It By That Much

David Goldfarb wrote:

> Dan Goodman <dsgood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Among the things that rang oddly about that story to me:
> 
> The logics were telephones, televisions, and video game consoles...
> but there was only one of them per household.  What happens when 
> two family members want to use one at the same time?
> 
> (I suppose it could work on a mainframe-terminal model, so that
> multiple people can use different functions, but I don't recall
> anything in the story that would suggest it was the case.)

That was a time when the idea of middle-class houses with more than one
bathroom was still catching on.

I suspect the idea of having more than one of _any_ appliance didn't
occur to Leinster -- or his editor.

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