Not seeing the future

[jenstar]

Did anyone successfully predict the World Wide Web or anything like it? I have read a lot of books from the 60s, 70s and 80s that looked ahead, particularly to the year 2000, and not one of them comes close to predicting it.

[doristwonk]

Yes . Old Mother Shipton, who lived in a cave at Knarseborough (near Harrogate) in the medieaval times was well known,(even famed) for her predictions. She said "Ande shall come one Gates out of Seattle in the lande yet to be seene. He wille be a right willie and conphuse the world of learning with his conjoringness. He will be a prat of the first pressinge and all shall revile hym."

[banana]

I recalled reading something that Old mother shipton is really suppoes to have said and looked it up here http://www.mm2000.nu/shiptona.html but the source is questionabl;e to say the least.

[mikewith]

Vannevar Bush wrote a celebrated essay in 1945 called 'As We May Think' ( http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/comput
er/bushf.htm ) which predicted much of what we now caall the Internet, specifically associative linking. J.C.R. Licklider at ARPA first proposed a linked network of computers in the early 60s - that happened after he left, with ARPANET effectively the forerunner of the Internet.