
Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet and PC (1974) - zeeshanm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIRZebE8O84
======
wfn
_It will soon be possible, for instance, for a business man in New York to
dictate instructions and have them appear instantly in type in London or
elsewhere. He will be able to call up from his desk and talk with any
telephone subscriber in the world. It will only be necessary to carry an
inexpensive instrument not bigger than a watch, which will enable its bearer
to hear anywhere on sea or land for distances of thousands of miles. One may
listen or transmit speech or song to the uttermost parts of the world. In the
same way any kind of picture, drawing, or print can be transferred from on
place to another. It will be possible to operate millions of such instruments
from a single station. Thus it will be a simple matter to keep the uttermost
parts of the world in instant tough with each other. The song of a great
singer, the speech of a political leader, the sermon of a great divine, the
lecture of a man of science may thus be delivered to an audience scattered all
over the world._

\- Tesla, 1909

[http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nN8DAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA476&vq...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nN8DAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA476&vq=tesla&pg=PA476&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[http://www.teslasociety.com/pictures/teslatower/teslatower3....](http://www.teslasociety.com/pictures/teslatower/teslatower3.jpg)

He also said some nice things about communication devices "in your vest
pocket," but I can't find it.

~~~
Osmium
> _The song of a great singer, the speech of a political leader, the sermon of
> a great divine, the lecture of a man of science may thus be delivered to an
> audience scattered all over the world._

" _...and videos of cats._ "

I find it endearing that our visions of the future always see the best (or
worst) of humanity, but never the mundane or banal.

> He also said some nice things about communication devices "in your vest
> pocket," but I can't find it.

I had a search. Maybe this one?

"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a
huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and
rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly,
irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony
we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face,
despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments
through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared
with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest
pocket."

[http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1926-01-30.htm](http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1926-01-30.htm)

though I think that's actually one of the less interesting things to be found
in that interview... Tesla really was quite the interesting person, it seems.

~~~
wfn
Ah indeed, that's the one!

> _though I think that 's actually one of the less interesting things to be
> found in that interview_

oh I probably agree, or at least in general - in terms of what kinds of things
Tesla might have said that might still be relevant. Check out his biography on
wiki - totally bananas, and most awe-some indeed.

------
sparkzilla
I interviewed Clarke in Sri Lanka in 2003 and asked him what he predicted for
the future. He pointed to a bookcase full of his books. Then he told me a
joke: [http://newslines.org/mark-mary-devlin/arthur-c-clarke-
tells-...](http://newslines.org/mark-mary-devlin/arthur-c-clarke-tells-mark-a-
joke/)

~~~
playhard
Thanks for sharing. The joke was really funny!

------
doomlaser
This is from 1974. It's worth noting that by 1974, the TCP/IP spec was already
written, what many consider the first PC (the Altair 8800) was out, and
ARPANet had been around for years, with transatlantic nodes already in
existence.

~~~
cbd1984
> what many consider the first PC (the Altair 8800) was out

There's a good case to be made that the first personal computer was introduced
in 1971, and had actually ceased production in 1973:
[http://www.kenbak-1.net/](http://www.kenbak-1.net/)

The Altair 8800 is more important as a predecessor on the main line of
microcomputer development, but the basic idea of a computer a single
individual human being who wasn't massively wealthy could own was actually, to
some small extent, achieved a few years before anything that would evolve into
the rest of the microcomputer line was in existence. (To be technical, the
Kenbak-1 can't be in the microcomputer line because it wasn't a microcomputer,
because its CPU was built out of discrete components as opposed to having been
a microprocessor.)

~~~
digi_owl
Seems to me that the computers that come and then fade again have one thing in
common, limited expandability.

The Altair 8800 brought with it the S-100 bus. And you find a similar bus
(ISA) on the early IBM PC. both of these meant that a single "core structure"
could be made to do multiple things.

------
thisjepisje
THE MACHINE STOPS

by E.M. Forster (1909)

[http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html)

~~~
jacobsimon
Seconded. This is such an awesome short story. Forster isn't remembered as a
prolific sci-fi author, but this story does a great job of predicting the
problems of modern technology.

------
aaroninsf
...but Robert Heinlein predicted why or rather how the web would work on us.
In 'Friday,' he gets wrong that it will be a system with metered, limited
access...

...but (to my mind, remarkably) predicts that multimedia-enabled hypertext
will lead to associative impulsive serendipitous browsing, not structured
intentional behavior. The one scene in which the eponymous character interacts
with the network is given primarily to a discussion of her own digression into
subjects far afield from her nominal research topic.

...he also predicts that this might provide surprising value.

RIP RAL!

~~~
dalke
He also described it as a hierarchical system: Set your terminal to
"research." Punch parameters in succession "North American culture," "English-
speaking," "mid-twentieth century," "comedians,", "the World's Greatest
Authority." The answer you can expect is "Professor Irwin Corey." You'll find
his routines timeless humor.

Mind you, this is after Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" and Memex, which got
many people excited about the idea. This in turn was influenced by earlier
investigations by Davis and Draeger in 1935 on searching with microfilm.

In the last year I've been researching earlier information systems, including
those of the punch card era. Calvin Mooers, in his paper "Making Information
Retrieval Pay", which coined the term "information retrieval", proposes a
mechanical search engine called DOKEN which could handle Heinlein's proposed
query (see
[http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=4243](http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=4243)
), except that "Professor Irwin Corey" is too specific to be an index query
using Zatocoding.

------
zacfinger
Prescient. However the earliest accurate prediction of the Internet and
personal computing I've yet come across is still Murray Leinster's 1946 short
story "A Logic Named Joe"

[http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm](http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm)

~~~
theoh
How about Paul Valery in around 1900:

"Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off
to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied
with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple
movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign."

Sure, it doesn't use the language and notion of the computer, but how
important is computing per se to 95% of Internet users?

~~~
theoh
I'm sorry to say that I have discovered that this first appeared in an essay,
The Conquest of Ubiquity, published in 1928. So, not quite as amazing as I
thought. Walter Benjamin didn't identify the precise source when he quoted it.

------
mcv
To be accurate, he predicted not the PC and the internet in this clip, but
having a terminal (console) at home that connects to a computer somewhere
else. My dad had that in the late 1970s: a big (printer) terminal that
connected by 300 baud modem to his office.

~~~
efaref
Most people only really use their computer as a terminal to connect (via HTTP)
to a computer somewhere else (facebook.com).

~~~
digi_owl
Computing seems to be about reinventing the old in a more glossy exterior
every other generation or so.

The "cloud" seems to be a new go at the virtualization uses that has been done
on mainframes since the 70s. One may go as far as to say that the cluster rack
is the mainframe v2.

------
Zuider
Clarke also predicted genetically engineered chimpanzee slaves, the
'Superchimp' (or 'Simp' for short). Leaving aside the ethical issues this
raises, it indicates that he thought that it was more likely that such a
creature would be created than intelligent robots.

[http://nemaloknig.info/read-88307/](http://nemaloknig.info/read-88307/)

------
ekianjo
It's a nice video but this was in 1974, not THAT long ago despite the fact
it's in black and white. Let's not forget that a lot of people actively try to
achieve things that take longer than they expect to come to market, so it's
not completely surprising someone back then had a clear vision of what could
the future be like (and happened to be right. But for each good prediction
there's a 100 out there which were wrong, so let's not forget that).

------
StandardFuture
He also predicts that the entire workforce will become purely remote workers
(telecommuters). While this is technically possible, it has met quite the
opposition (and lack of proper tooling to make it as efficient and effective
as it needs to be). Of course, maybe that is the idealist view. The realist
view is that it will only lead to easier outsourcing? :p

~~~
sjwright
> He also predicts that the entire workforce will become purely remote workers

Did he make that statement elsewhere?

In this video he just said "it would make it possible to live anywhere we
like. Any businessman or executive could live almost anywhere on earth and
still do his business". That's largely true today.

~~~
stephenc_c_
It's possible, yet we still see the majority of jobs in cities where people
either have to live or commute to - at the expense of time and money.

And funnily enough, Silicon Valley, part of the industry that makes it
possible to work remotely is highly localised.

------
blazespin
Yeah, Arthur C Clark had some doozies. The bio-engineered monkeys as servants
was a good one. :) [http://mentalfloss.com/article/57157/arthur-c-clarke-
predict...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/57157/arthur-c-clarke-predicts-
future-1964)

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skuunk1
I wonder where the interviewer's son Jonathan is now and what his thoughts
are?

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nbevans
He also predicted in this video "digital nomadism" when he mentions about
being able to live anywhere in the world and still work.

Yeah, I'm British but I'm posting this from Singapore. #yolo

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psgbg
Relevant:

The Oracle: _We can never see past the choices we don 't understand._

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Quai
Isn't it a bit late to predict that NOW!?.. :P

I really enjoyed books like "Rendezvous with Rama". It isn't often that books
written about the future in the 70's still are as mesmerizing today.

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BorisMelnik
Crazy - not only predicted the internet and the PC but nailed the commerce
portion of it as well almost down to a T.

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pwr22
> Computer dependent society

Yep!

