posted on Jan, 20 2011 @ 07:42 AM
reply to post by punctual
I think the best prediction of all time was bill gates' vision (which was very unpopular at the time) of a future in which every household
owns a computer.....of course, he became the richest man in the world because of that prediction.
Even before Gates was alive there was a famous story called "A Logic Named Joe". You might even be able to download this story from the internet. It
was done as a radio show a few times. The basis of the story is that computers, called logics in the story, are networked together and people buy them
as household appliances. When one, that a kid has nicknamed Joe is added to the network, all of the computers become intelligent and override their
safety settings telling people what they want to know. This allows a few people to commit the perfect crimes.
This is an interesting story which has home computers and all connected into a worldwide network.
Another story that might be of interest is "Child's Play". This story is also from 1950. It is about a man that accidentally receives a package
delivered as a gift. The delivery service gets the year wrong and delivers the package the wrong year. The futuristic child's toy allows you to
create life from nothing and to also clone life. The man decides to clone himself and allow his clone to fill in for him at work and other places so
that he can live a life of leisure.
These and other stories were based on 1940s short stories. Bill Gates' prediction was not so new. Besides IBM had the same prediction before Gates.
The makers of the Altair computers had the same goal before Gates.