“We can point to other precursors, too. H. G. Wells, for example, wrote The World Brain before the War and tried hard to fund a foundation that would manage an open-source microfilm encyclopedia of the world’s knowledge. But the really astonishing prediction is not Bush’s but Murray Leinster’s 1946 short story, “A Logic Name Joe”. Some of the things Leinster gets right: * Web terminals will be appliances found in every home – not vast machines serviced by an army of girls armed with typewriters. * Everyone will have one; is is not only scholars and scientists who need the world’s literature at their fingertips. * The computational logic in the home will be substantial. Server farms — Leinster calls them “tanks”, will be large but comparatively simple. * One of the first things that kids will ask their computers to tell them about is sex. * One of the first things that adults will ask their computers to tell them about is fraud. * When adults find out what the kids want to know, they... - × × ×