The iPad

[Great Rumbler]

The very fact that the old ARPANET eventually transformed into the modern Internet insists that people with this vision were definitely out there. I'm simply surprised that the idea rarely manifested in sci-fi of the era. The primitive state of the Web is immaterial. H. G. Wells was describing concepts like interplanetary space travel and energy weapons years before the discovery of manned flight and more than half a century before the invention of the laser.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep touched briefly on the concept of a kind of global network. It wasn't a central plot point but the network, dubbed "Mercer" based on the name of the figure who was central to the network, that allowed people to share emotions through their Mercer boxes with other people who also had their Mercer boxes turned on. Basic stuff, but the concept was there.