If you predicted the decline of deadtree books or the rise of services like Netflix streaming, say, 25 years ago, you’d be considered a damn good prognosticator. But what if you predicted those things back in 1964—before the internet even existed? Amazingly, a scientist from IBM did just that, long before any of these things were widely considered possible, much less inevitable.
In 1964, artificial intelligence pioneer Dr. Arthur L. Samuel wrote an article for New Scientisttitled, “The Banishment of Paper-Work,” that imagined what the networked computer landscape may look like by the year 1984. Samuel predicted movies on demand, government control over what information might be accessed, and the death of the deadtree library. He got a lot right. Samuel was just a bit optimistic about the timeline.
via Gizmodo
