# The Internet in Old Sci Fi **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 10, 2015, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315 "2015-02-10T18:46:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/1 "2015-02-10T18:46:11Z")
Which if any old science fiction books, movies etc. predicted the internet more or less as we know it now? I’m mainly thinking of things written before the internet existed in any form, say before even the start of research into the idea ca. 1969 (or please correct that date), but also perhaps things written when the internet concept arguably existed but was obscure, accurately predicting what it has become. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/2 "2015-02-10T18:50:27Z")
Murray Leinster’s “A Logic Named Joe” [- Chapter 2](http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm) is remarkably predictive - in addition to describing the benefits of easy information access, it also includes worries about access to dangerous or inappropriate information. “You got a Logic in your house. It looks like a vision-receiver used to, only it’s got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get… Say you punch “Station SNAFU” on your Logic. Relays in the Tank take over an’ whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecastin’ comes on your Logic’s screen. Or you punch “Sally Hancock’s Phone” an’ … you’re hooked up with the Logic in her house … But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today’s race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin’ Garfield’s administration … that’s what comes on the screen too. “ ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/3 "2015-02-10T18:50:38Z")
"A Logic Named Joe"by Murray Leinster that was first published in the March 1946. Got most of the details right, up to and including SafeSearch filters. The terminology did not turn out the way he envisioned though. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/4 "2015-02-10T18:52:09Z")
They might not be as old as you were hoping, but two good “reasonably modern Internet” stories are Orson Scott Card’s _Ender’s Game_ (1985), which portrays a fairly decent model of online message boards/newsgroups, and William Gibson’s _Neuromancer_ (1984), which presents a world similar to MMORPG’s and Second Life. IIRC, Second Life was inspired, in part, by _Neuromancer_. Both of these books, of course, post-date the Internet in a technical sense, but they pre-date the Internet in its modern, social form. To those reading those books in the 1980’s, they really were SF not only in terms of the exact technology used but in terms of just having a worldwide computer network that anyone could get on to. In 1985, getting online was a big thing and something generally restricted to university students and certain military personnel. You couldn’t just go and sign up on a lark. You had to know someone and/or pay through the nose for a crappy, slow-as-molasses connection. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/5 "2015-02-10T19:00:51Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > They might not be as old as you were hoping, but two good “reasonably modern Internet” stories are Orson Scott Card’s _Ender’s Game_ (1985), which portrays a fairly decent model of online message boards/newsgroups, and William Gibson’s _Neuromancer_ (1984), which presents a world similar to MMORPG’s and Second Life. IIRC, Second Life was inspired, in part, by _Neuromancer_. > > Both of these books, of course, post-date the Internet in a technical sense, but they pre-date the Internet in its modern, social form. To those reading those books in the 1980’s, they really were SF not only in terms of the exact technology used but in terms of just having a worldwide computer network that anyone could get on to. In 1985, getting online was a big thing and something generally restricted to university students and certain military personnel. You couldn’t just go and sign up on a lark. You had to know someone and/or pay through the nose for a crappy, slow-as-molasses connection. In that vein you might also look up “Shockwave Rider” from John Brunner in 1975. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/6 "2015-02-10T19:09:56Z")
The obvious answer has already been given. I’ll note that Leinster’s story is supposed to have been inspired by a speech by Vannevar Bush, and that a much earlier idea is H.G. Wells’ **World Brain** : > [@](#): > > World Brain is a collection of essays and addresses by the English science fiction pioneer, social reformer, evolutionary biologist and historian H. G. Wells, dating from the period of 1936–38. Throughout the book, Wells describes his vision of the World Brain: a new, free, synthetic, authoritative, permanent “World Encyclopaedia” that could help world citizens make the best use of universal information resources and make the best contribution to world peace. > **[World Brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Brain)** > > World Brain is a collection of essays and addresses by the English science fiction pioneer, social reformer, evolutionary biologist and historian H. G. Wells, dating from the period of 1936–1938. Throughout the book, Wells describes his vision of the World Brain: a new, free, synthetic, authoritative, permanent "World Encyclopaedia" that could help world citizens make the best use of universal information resources and make the best contribution to world peace. > Plans for creating a global kn... From the same page: > [@](#): > > 1930s: World Congress of Universal Documentation[edit] > > One of the stated goals of this Congress, held in Paris, France, in 1937, was to discuss ideas and methods for implementing Wells’s ideas of the World Brain. Wells himself gave a lecture at the Congress.[5] > > 1960s: The World Brain as a Supercomputer[edit] > > From World Library to World Brain[edit] > > In his 1962 book Profiles of the Future, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that the construction of what H. G. Wells called the World Brain would take place in two stages. He identified the first stage as the construction of the World Library, which is basically Wells’s concept of a universal encyclopaedia accessible to everyone from their home on computer terminals. He predicted this phase would be established (at least in the developed countries) by the year 2000. The second stage, the World Brain, would be a superintelligent artificially intelligent supercomputer that humans would be able to mutually interact with to solve various world problems. The “World Library” would be incorporated into the “World Brain” as a subsection of it. He suggested that this supercomputer should be installed in the former war rooms of the United States and the Soviet Union once the superpowers had matured enough to agree to co-operate rather than conflict with each other. Clarke predicted the construction of the “World Brain” would be completed by the year 2100.[6][need quotation to verify] I note that something very like the internet appears in much of Arthuir C. Clarke’s later fiction (such as **the Fountains of Paradise** ), although by the time he wrote DARPANET was already in place, so it wasn’t much of a stretch. What amazes me is how the internet, or something like it, is _absent_ from so much science fiction. Leinster,m despite his incredible hit with “A Logic Named Joe”, never used the idea again, to my knowledge. Heinlein and Asimov didn’t use it. Clarke used it sparingly. Virtually nobody describes an internet-like experience until the Internet was a reality (the first SFnovel I really read with the internet in it was Harry Turtledove’s **Homeward Bound** , which was from 2004. Even Neal Stephenson’s significant 1992 **Snow Crash** , although it has people interacting in a VR setting, isn’t really the internet. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/7 "2015-02-10T20:11:19Z")
[This well-known illustration](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Future_Luxury_Harry_Grant_Dart_1911.jpg), from the then humor magazine Life in 1911, shows a typical mocking view of the future, in which people will be inundated by information from around the world without having to leave their easy chairs. The cartoonist, Henry Grant Dart, combines a number of notions that were common in futures forecasts, that news, music, and information would be piped into homes. The big problem in a world before computers was storage. For many people microforms would be the answer. > [@](#): > > The developments in microphotography continued through the next decades, but it was not until the turn of the century that its potential for practical usage was seized by a wider audience. In 1896, Canadian engineer Reginald A. Fessenden suggested microforms were a compact solution to engineers’ unwieldy but frequently consulted materials. He proposed that up to 150,000,000 words could be made to fit in a square inch, and that a one foot cube could contain 1.5 million volumes.[5] > > In 1906, Paul Otlet and Robert Goldschmidt proposed the livre microphotographique as a way to alleviate the cost and space limitations imposed by the codex format.[6] Otlet’s overarching goal was to create a World Center Library of Juridical, Social and Cultural Documentation, and he saw microfiche as way to offer a stable and durable format that was inexpensive, easy to use, easy to reproduce, and extremely compact. In 1925, the team spoke of a massive library where each volume existed as master negatives and positives, and where items were printed on demand for interested patrons.[7] Even after the computer was a reality, computer storage was by our standards tiny and cumbersome. Without storage you don’t have an internet and that made all extrapolation difficult. You can say with hindsight that they should have known, but it turned out to be tough to visualize before it came to pass for other reasons. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/8 "2015-02-10T20:14:48Z")
Not sure if this qualifies (as it’s an alien knowledge archive), but how about the underground machine of the Krell in _Forbidden Planet_? ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/9 "2015-02-10T20:28:09Z")
Apparently, Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens predicted the internet in 1898! > **[Mark Twain Predicts the Internet in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Story, “From...](https://www.openculture.com/2014/11/mark-twain-predicts-the-internet-in-1898-read-his-sci-fi-crime-story-from-the-london-times-in-1904.html)** > > Most people know that Mark Twain wrote about Jim and Huckleberry Finn navigating down the Mississippi. Less well known is that he occasionally dabbled in the burgeoning genre of science fiction. > **[6 Eerily Specific Inventions Predicted in Science Fiction](https://www.cracked.com/article_18846_6-eerily-specific-inventions-predicted-in-science-fiction.html)** > > Science fiction has had some stunningly accurate premonitions. And we're not talking about broad predictions, here. No, this stuff is impressively accurate. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/10 "2015-02-10T20:33:36Z")
Regarding Exapno’s point, you could say that the failing was an inability to anticipate Moore’s Law. Yet science fiction certainly WAS assuming that information was going to be effectively stored in compact volumes, even if they didn’t address how. You’d think more people would have considered the possibilities of automated cross-referencing (search engines). Heck, magazine and movie SF were full of giant computer “brains” that were supposedly correlating information. A year ago I read Raymond F. Jones’ _Renaissance_\*, republished as _Man of Two Worlds_ (1951). In it, all birth and death records (what we’d today call genetic records) are stored in a machine in a huge building. Microfilmed, if you like, or some equivalent technology. They were certainly considering that all this stuff would be squirreled away inside machines. \*Jones is better known for **This Island Earth** , which is much better as a book than the movie would suggest. It’s flawed, but has some good stuff in it. Including the source of my username. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/11 "2015-02-10T20:40:22Z")
Well, since all the good ones have been taken, how about Hitchhikers Guide? IIRC, it was written in the late 70’s and did a pretty good job of predicting something like the internet and things like search engines. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/12 "2015-02-10T20:43:18Z")
Most old sci-fi missed the internet entirely, but I’d argue the trope of “planet sized brain with a terminal in every household acting as a sort of omniscient oracle for individuals and families” was skating pretty close. They didn’t include event planning, shopping, social networking, blogs, or message boards, but asking the giant brain “How do I \_\_\_\_\_?” or “Tell me about \_\_\_\_\_?” or “When was \_\_\_\_?” are still extremely common use cases for most internet users. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/13 "2015-02-10T20:45:46Z")
Interesting factual article on the history of Digital Libraries, including Wells and Bush, and indicating othger luminaries: > **[Distributed Information Resources](https://books.google.com/books?id=Ncev8qeomWcC&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=science%2Bfiction%2Bpredictions%2B%22information%2Bscience%22&source=bl&ots=N452GKHlj-&sig=qEjb72jfluLuRI80x4R1LEHJFeo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=s2zaVJnwDZPjsATpgIGAAg&ved=0CFIQ6AEwCTgK#v=onepage&q=science%20fiction%20predictions%20%22information%20science%22&f=false)** > > Since its first volume in 1960, Advances in Computers has presented detailed coverage of innovations in hardware and software and in computer theory, design, and applications. It has also provided contributors with a medium in which they can examine... ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/14 "2015-02-10T20:51:29Z")
Like Leinster’s idea, most of the pre-internet references in sci-fi were to a powerful central mainframe and terminals to that single supercomputer in every house. I don’t think anyone really predicted the decentralized tangle of an internet we actually have today. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/15 "2015-02-10T20:52:27Z")
Verne’s In the Year 2889 (published of course in 1889) had some aspects of the Internet as well [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19362/19362-h/19362-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19362/19362-h/19362-h.htm) “Here 1500 reporters, in their respective places, facing an equal number of telephones, are communicating to the subscribers the news of the world as gathered during the night. The organization of this matchless service has often been described. Besides his telephone, each reporter, as the reader is aware, has in front of him a set of commutators, which enable him to communicate with any desired telephotic line. Thus the subscribers not only hear the news but see the occurrences. When an incident is described that is already past, photographs of its main features are transmitted with the narrative. And there is no confusion withal. The reporters’ items, just like the different stories and all the other component parts of the journal, are classified automatically according to an ingenious system, and reach the hearer in due succession. Furthermore, the hearers are free to listen only to what specially concerns them.” ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/16 "2015-02-10T20:55:06Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Not sure if this qualifies (as it’s an alien knowledge archive), but how about the underground machine of the Krell in _Forbidden Planet_? Another similar concept was Multivac, in Isaac Asimov’s stories. Many ormost homes had a Multivac terminal, which could access vast archives of Earth’s knowledge and answer questions, just like Google. The difference was, Multivac was sentient, and chose what answers to give. > **[Multivac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivac)** > > Multivac is the name of a fictional supercomputer appearing in over a dozen science fiction stories by American writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov's depiction of Multivac, a mainframe computer accessible by terminal, originally by specialists using machine code and later by any user, and used for directing the global economy and humanity's development, has been seen as the defining conceptualization of the genre of computers for the period (1950s–1960s). Multivac has been described as the direct ancesto... ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/17 "2015-02-10T20:58:02Z")
Kornbluth’s “marching Moron” series had a story about a doctor’s bag accidentally sent into the past - the “user manual” is a card that bends back and forth to change pages, containing more information than a large book. It feeds back to the central computer by temporal connection to alert central control if the tools are being misused. Asimov’s UNIVAC series described a large computer brain that runs communication around the world, does shipping, ordering, sets production targets, etc. I think it was Poul Anderson’s “Shield” where the protagonist (SPOILER) distributes the plans across the world by “videophone” and assumes everyone has a recorder built in to copy the plans he’s waving in front of the screen. I haven’t read it, but supposedly there’s a recently uncovered recently published very earliest Heinlein story where the internet is accessed by pneumatic tube; send your request and someone in the central office looks up whatever information you’re asking and sends you back a reply PDQ. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/18 "2015-02-10T21:05:45Z")
Heinlein’s 1982 book “Friday” has something like it, except not the internet part of it. Friday does a stint as a researcher for the Old Man’s organization, and has access to some kind of computerized universal library that lets her read or look up whatever information she wants. Except this is portrayed as some sort of local archive of information that could only be accessed at the secret agent base. Nowadays you can get things like [Arxiv.org](http://Arxiv.org) remotely. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/19 "2015-02-10T21:19:46Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > I haven’t read it, but supposedly there’s a recently uncovered recently published very earliest Heinlein story where the internet is accessed by pneumatic tube; send your request and someone in the central office looks up whatever information you’re asking and sends you back a reply PDQ. Back in the mid 70s, the Birmingham Central Library had a similar service. You could phone them with a query - “What’s the value of British exports to the USSR in 1975?” for example, and they would phone back quite quickly with an answer. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315/20 "2015-02-10T21:24:26Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > I haven’t read it, but supposedly there’s a recently uncovered recently published very earliest Heinlein story where the internet is accessed by pneumatic tube; send your request and someone in the central office looks up whatever information you’re asking and sends you back a reply PDQ. “For Us the Living” [For Us, the Living - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us,_The_Living:_A_Comedy_of_Customs) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-internet-in-old-sci-fi/712315.md?page=2)