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"I received a nice letter the other day from the Dalai Lama. He had read 'The Nine Billion Names of God'. It is about a computer at a Tibetan monastery."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Data-Net | ||
| An early mention of the idea of a nationwide data network. |
| Three hundred million people with access to the integrated North American data-net is a nice big number of potential consultees. |
| Technovelgy from The Shockwave Rider,
by John Brunner. Published by Harper and Row in 1975 Additional resources -
|
The idea is mentioned throughout the book; here are some additional quotes:
Meantime, taking advantage of the corporation's status, he could gain access to data-nets that were ordinarily secure...
"Healthy adults like yourself capable of doing things that have never been done before, such as writing a complete new identity into the data-net over a regular veephone..."
Compare to this very early use of the word web as a metaphor for a data network in Souvenir, a 1954 story by Philip K. Dick. See also See also tanks from A Logic Named Joe (1946) by Murray Leinster.
According to recent report, there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net now, the machines had been instructed to give them low priority unless they related to a medical emergency...
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