Imagine a world where interconnected computers could stream news and video on request, help kids with homework, deliver stock quotes, allow instant and effortless communications (including video conferencing), and where most of mankind’s collected knowledge is a few keystrokes away. OK, that’s all old news in 2007, more than a decade into the information revolution brought about by the ubiquitous Internet and $350 computers. But it would have been a truly astounding idea in 1946, when Murray Leinster wrote the prophetic short story, A Logic Named Joe.
In the story (1946!), Leinster called his PCs “logics”, and they were connected to big data warehouses called “tanks.” Here’s more about the Logics:
You got a logic in your house. It looks like a vision receiver used to, only it’s got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get. It’s hooked in to the tank, which has the Carson Circuit all fixed up with relays. Say you punch “Station SNAFU” on your logic. Relays in the tank take over an’ whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecastin’ comes on your logic’s screen. Or you punch “Sally Hancock’s Phone” an’ the screen blinks an’ sputters an’ you’re hooked up with the logic in her house an’ if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today’s race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin’ Garfield’s administration or what is PDQ and R sellin’ for today, that comes on the screen too. The relays in the tank do it. The tank is a big buildin’ full of all the facts in creation an’ all the recorded telecasts that ever was made—an’ it’s hooked in with all the other tanks all over the country—an’ everything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it an’ you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, an’ keeps books, an’ acts as consultin’ chemist, physicist, astronomer, an’ tea-leaf reader, with a “Advice to the Lovelorn” thrown in. The only thing it won’t do is tell you exactly what your wife meant when she said, “Oh, you think so, do you?” in that peculiar kinda voice. Logics don’t work good on women. Only on things that make sense.
Leinster did a pretty good job of describing the modern Internet accessed by a global network of personal computers, at a time when Eniac had just been powered up and fictional rocket navigators still used slide rules to plot courses to distant planets. And besides, there’s something very cool about a guy named “Murray” inventing the Internet in 1946.
Space pirate with slide rule in teeth:Â
