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

[Damien Broderick]

John Perry Barlow sez:
>
> "The first prediction I can think of is this:
>
> 'Is it a fact - or have I dreamt it - that, by means of electricity,
> the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of
> miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a
> vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!'
>
> That, believe it or not, was Nathanial Hawthorne, from the invocation
> of The House of Seven Gables.

Nathaniel. His character was talking, of course, about the telegraph, and in
the context of spiritualism:

=====

Chapter 17:

"Within the lifetime of the child already born," Clifford went on, "all this
will be done away. The world is growing too ethereal and spiritual to bear
these enormities a great while longer. To me, though, for a considerable
period of time, I have lived chiefly in retirement, and know less of such
things than most men,--even to me, the harbingers of a better era are
unmistakable. Mesmerism, now! Will that effect nothing, think you, towards
purging away the grossness out of human life?"

"All a humbug!" growled the old gentleman.

"These rapping spirits, that little Phoebe told us of, the other day," said
Clifford,--"what are these but the messengers of the spiritual world,
knocking at the door of substance? And it shall be flung wide open!"

"A humbug, again!" cried the old gentleman, growing more and more testy at
these glimpses of Clifford's metaphysics. "I should like to rap with a good
stick on the empty pates of the dolts who circulate such nonsense!"

"Then there is electricity,--the demon, the angel, the mighty physical
power, the all-pervading intelligence!" exclaimed Clifford. "Is that a
humbug, too? Is it a fact--or have I dreamt it--that, by means of
electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating
thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is
a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence! Or, shall we say, it is
itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we
deemed it!"

"If you mean the telegraph," said the old gentleman, glancing his eye toward
its wire, alongside the rail-track, "it is an excellent thing,--that is, of
course, if the speculators in cotton and politics don't get possession of
it. A great thing, indeed, sir, particularly as regards the detection of
bank-robbers and murderers."

"I don't quite like it, in that point of view," replied Clifford. "A
bank-robber, and what you call a murderer, likewise, has his rights, which
men of enlightened humanity and conscience should regard in so much the more
liberal spirit, because the bulk of society is prone to controvert their
existence. An almost spiritual medium, like the electric telegraph, should
be consecrated to high, deep, joyful, and holy missions. Lovers, day by,
day--hour by hour, if so often moved to do it,--might send their
heart-throbs from Maine to Florida, with some such words as these `I love
you forever!' --`My heart runs over with love!'--`I love you more than I
can!' and, again, at the next message 'I have lived an hour longer, and love
you twice as much!' Or, when a good man has departed, his distant friend
should be conscious of an electric thrill, as from the world of happy
spirits, telling him 'Your dear friend is in bliss!' Or, to an absent
husband, should come tidings thus

`An immortal being, of whom you are the father, has this moment come from
God!' and immediately its little voice would seem to have reached so far,
and to be echoing in his heart. But for these poor rogues, the
bank-robbers,--who, after all, are about as honest as nine people in ten,
except that they disregard certain formalities, and prefer to transact
business at midnight rather than 'Change-hours, --and for these murderers,
as you phrase it, who are often excusable in the motives of their deed, and
deserve to be ranked among public benefactors, if we consider only its
result,--for unfortunate individuals like these, I really cannot applaud the
enlistment of an immaterial and miraculous power in the universal world-hunt
at their heels!"

==========

I'm with the the old gentleman. :)

But Hawthorne might have been the first to predict porn spam, although it's
possible that he got the tone just a little bit wrong:

< An almost spiritual medium, like the electric telegraph, should be
consecrated to high, deep, joyful, and holy missions. Lovers, day by,
day--hour by hour, if so often moved to do it,--might send their
heart-throbs from Maine to Florida, with some such words as these `I love
you forever!' --`My heart runs over with love!' >

Damien Broderick