Re: Missed It By That Much

In article
<614ca98c-2485-47b5-a8b9-611fb983add3@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 <ncwaite@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>On 19 Apr, 22:46, nebu...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (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.  
>>
>
>Another Clarke prediction, this time from _The Lost Worlds of 2001_ .
>Once section features some-one receiving what can be best described as
>an e-mail (text message delivered to a terminal).  For some reason,
>however, he describes the message automatically being printed out on
>paper as soon as it was received (more like a telex, I guess) rather
>than being stored and viewed on a monitor.  This is particularly
>jarring since the person receiving the e-mail is on a space****p in
>orbit around Mars, where he might find it difficult to get more paper
>should he happen to run out.

	One of Poul Anderson's books (Don't recall the title: the one
about an alien from Sigma Draconis dropping by) has something like the
WWW that is also limited to printed output.
-- 
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll
(For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-****rt, cup and tote-bag needs)