Teh Intarwebz wuz predicted in Zardoz.
Posted on 03/31/2012 8:26:05 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
Amazing!
"Open the pod bay door Hal."
NOW I KNOW! where Al Gore got his inspiration for creating the internet from.
Teh Intarwebz wuz predicted in Zardoz.
ACC was a visionary.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Clark more than a few times while working with his (and my) great friend Peter Throckmorton. Arthur was in Sri Lanka and we were in Lauderdale, when not working offshore. I can still hear his voice and hear him saying, “Well, good evening ........ I assume Peter isn’t there but that’s OK, I always enjoy speaking with you.”
I recently read Eddie Rickenbacker’s autobiography. Written in 1964 I think) Amazing man, WWI Ace of Aces, WWI Intelligence agent, survived a month lost at sea in a raft, owned Eastern Airlines, race car driver, Owned an automobile manufacturing company etc. but at the end, he listed what he thought the future would bring. He spent a lot of time discussing how he believed the commerce would be done by two way television with fast delivery by air.
Clark stole his ideas. He pestered bright people with calls and conversations, and when they said something brilliant, Clark would publish it as his own. I once knew a brilliant person who was on his “list”, and complained of this practice, and implied there were many others on the “list”. It was as though only science fiction writers were allowed to take credit for ideas, mere scientists were just a source for them.
And there is the homosexual thing, and allegations of pedophilia.
Not a good man.
Clarke was inventive, to be sure. But by 1974 DARPA had already built the alpha version of “The Internet”, and PCs were obvious.
a version of the internet existed in 1974 as did computers in-between a main frame and what is today known as a PC. All Clarke did was say that these things would become common place. That is hardly predictive
Now if in 1920 he had predicted holographic imaging of music that would have been predictive
I saw him lecture once, around the time of this video. He expounded on many things, as might be expected.
Known as an iconoclast, he made a memorable quip, not quite in seriousness I am sure. I paraphrase:
“I suspect that the revenues collected by the telephone companies from long distance calls just cover the costs they incur from recording them. By eliminating the tolls, they would break even and the customers would win.”
For astonishing predictions of the technological future, nobody beats H.G. Wells.
Meh, they were already demoing this stuff back in 1968
Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo
“...I have not heard of any challenge...”
I have.
Having access to the ideas of people who are generous and sharing, and not litigious and vane, and access to means of publication, can lead to abuse. It does lead to abuse. Benjamin Franklin was a very bright guy; do you think every idea he printed was his own? Buckminster Fuller? Science fiction writers in general fall in to this category. They are not held to the same standards as scientists. Plagiarism from another SF writer is taboo, from anyone else — well that’s just research.
A previous post mentions Clark calling on a regular basis. That’s what he did. He called many brilliant people often — to the point of annoyance. He was data mining, and doing so in a way that was not documented. How convenient for him.
That must be why scientists named the Clarke orbit after him.
From what I read Rickenbacker was a punk as a kid, who led his own gang. He turned out really well considering. He ran a very successful airline using a dictatorial style better suited for the Middle East.
true that though Jule Verne gave him a run for the money.
Yes! That's a very good point.
probably but keep in mind how differently businesses were run in the 1930’s than they are today
David Sarnoff, 1964: “The computer will become the hub of a vast network of remote data stations and information banks feeding into the machine at a transmission rate of a billion or more bits of information a second. Laser channels will vastly increase both data capacity and the speeds with which it will be transmitted. Eventually, a global communications network handling voice, data and facsimile will instantly link man to machine—or machine to machine—by land, air, underwater, and space circuits. [The computer] will affect man’s ways of thinking, his means of education, his relationship to his physical and social environment, and it will alter his ways of living... [Before the end of this century, these forces] will coalesce into what unquestionably will become the greatest adventure of the human mind.”
From THE PROMISE AND CHALLENGE OF THE COMPUTER
David Sarnoff, Chairman of the Board
Radio Corporation of America
October 27, 1964
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sarnoff
Also see “As We May Think” By Vannevar Bush July 1945
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/3881/?single_page=true
Murray Leinster “A Logic named Joe” March 1946 predicted Google.
That was in 1980.
Since I was referring specifically to his Wireless World 1945 article, and you say you have heard of prior art, might you have a reference for me?
Seriously, I would appreciate it.
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