[extropy-chat] Who Anticipated Internet Exploding in 90s?

[BillK]

On Wed Dec 03, 2003 03:57 am Charlie Stross wrote:
> Surely "True Names" by Vernor Vinge counts? He had the net as a
> ubiquitous service, certainly, and that was published in 1980.
>

Right on the mark.   Quote:
For historians of cyberculture, science fiction author Vernor Vinge
enjoys unimpeachable street cred. Three years before William Gibson
dazzled the SF world with "Neuromancer," Vinge captured the essence of
the online reality to come in his eerily prescient novella "True Names",
published in 1981." "True Names" today reads more like a piece of
reportage than speculative science fiction. William Gibson may get all
the glory for defining the word "cyberspace," but Vinge actually nailed
the details. "True Names" includes online gathering places identical to
the MUDs (multi-user domains) that became the online rage in the late
'80s. Its protagonists guard their real names from the National Security
Agency and other hackers with cryptographic safeguards, just like
today's cryptopunks. And they live solely to log on -- the pathology of
today's Internet addiction is all-too-familiar in "True Names."


Any prediction about the world filled with computers talking to each is
likely to be later than the invention of personal computers themselves.
(approx 1975-1980). When the founders started working on linking
computers in the 1960s, they were talking about linking mainframes via
time-share terminals.

BillK