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"We are all repositories for genetically-encoded information that we're all spreading back and forth amongst each other, all the time. We're just lousy with information."
- Neal Stephenson

Trace Web  
  A small, handheld device that contacts (and even instantiates) the larger network.  

Fascinating early use of the word web for a vast, interrelated data network.

"Here we go, sir," the robot pilot said. The words startled Rogers and made him look up sharply. He tensed his body and adjusted the trace web inside his coat as the bubble ship started dropping, swiftly and silently, toward the planet's surface...

Rogers' fingers touched the trace web. The web warmed into life. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said.

Technovelgy from Souvenir, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Fantastic Universe in 1954
Additional resources -

Based on this usage, people should start calling their phone a "web" anytime now.

Compare to the control-face from William Gibson's 1996 novel Idoru and of course to the Joymaker from Frederik Pohl's 1966 novel The Age of the Pussyfoot.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Souvenir
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to Souvenir
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

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