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Comment by coglethorpe | Hacker News Reader

"Did anyone predict that I could be talking with people around the globe who share my interests, instantaneously, without leaving my bedroom?"

They had tablet PC's and the equivalent of internet blogs and forums in "Ender's Game," so I assume other authors had similar ideas.

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Writers began "predicting" this sort of thing about the same time they started signing up for online services in the early 80s.

Indeed; Jerry Pournelle somewhat famously predicted in _Byte_ that by 2000, anyone in the Western world would be able to ask a question and get the answer, if the answer was known by anyone.

We've pretty much had that since 1998 or so. :)

See, I'd credit Heinlein with predicting the internet back in the fifties and sixties.

What works are you thinking of? When I think of Heinlein in that period, I remember a protagonist talking with a trucker about the truck's antigrav propulsion, then whipping out a slip-stick to figure out how far down it would be pushed under load. (Citizen of the Galaxy, I think.)

Stranger in a Strange Land had some "news nets" or somesuch that seemed pretty close to me. That's sixty-one. I poked through though, and everything that I was thinking of specifically turned out to be much later.

Well, "network" had a different meaning back in 1961. :)

Stranger is one of the few (only?) Heinlein things I haven't read, mind. Need to get around to it.

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