The Internet Foretold

Yesterday, I read an Isaac Asimov story entitled "Anniversary", which was first published in Amazing Stories in 1959. It's a story of the get-together of three friends, shipwreck survivors all from twenty years earlier. In any case, I found this part of the story--which reminded me of the internet--quite interesting (I removed certain paragraphs, retaining only the portions dealing with the world wide web):

"Ask Multivac," said Brandon.

Shea's eyes opened wide. "Multivac! Say, Mr. Moore, do you have a Multivac outlet here?"

"Yes."

"I've never seen one, and I've always wanted to."

"It's nothing to look at, Mike. It looks just like a typewriter. Don't confuse a Multivac outlet with Multivac itself. I don't know anyone who's seen Multivac."

Moore smile at the thought. He doubted if ever in his life he would meet any of the handful of technicians who spent most of their working days in a hidden spot in the bowels of Earth tending a mile-long super-computer that was the repository of all the facts known to man, that guided man's economy, directed his scientific research, helped make his political decisions, and had millions of circuits left over to answer individual questions that did not violate the ethics of privacy.

Brandon said as they moved up the power ramp to the second floor, "I've been thinking of installing a Multivac, Jr., outlet for the kids. Homework and things, you know. And yet I don't want to make it just a fancy and expensive crutch for them. How do you make it work, Warren?"

The spaceman said, "How does it answer? Does it talk?"

Moore laughed gently. "Oh, no. I don't spend that kind of money. This model just prints the answer on a slip of tape that comes out of that slot."

Interesting, isn't it? And this was in 1959.

Online shopping was predicted in 1968, about ten years after the story was published.

But this has got it all beat: it seems that the internet was predicted with astonishing accuracy back in 1934.

And now, we have some saying that the internet (as we know it today) will die by 2012. Others say it will die, and then evolve into something else. And still others say that unless expensive upgrades are begun today, in less than three years the internet will run out of numerical protocol addresses, which will result in data transfer speeds slowing down to the speed of molasses.