We often read that Science Fiction Literature and Film predicts the future.
The reality is: This is more often false than true. Mostly, Science Fiction is, probably, the genre that is the best at describing hopes, fears and the zeitgeist of the time when it was conceived.
There are exceptions, of course: “The Space Merchants” (1952) by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth is, despite its humorous tone, almost too painful to read in its accurate description of capitalism’s present and likely future.
A lesser known example is Murray Leinster’s (1896-1975) short story “A Logic Named Joe” from 1946.
In a time, when computers were still huge machines built from tubes and relays, he imagined a world with ubiqutous interconnected personal computers, providing information, entertainment and all kind of digital services. For decades, his vision remained the by far most accurate description of what the internet would later become.
However, this is only the background to his story, which essentially deals with the side effects of a spontaneously emerging general artificial intelligence in a “logic”, which is the name he uses for “PC”.
Leinster’s ideas are hilarious and yet, to me, they seem still to be far more accurate than some of the apocalyptic visions some tech bros like to warn us about.
The story is still available in print for a few bucks, but if you’re willing to read a crappy pdf, here you go:
https://blog.minaspace.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Joe.pdf
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