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"A Logic Named Joe" predicted Alexa way back in 1946

bryce

bryce

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Rear Admiral
Seriously. This is basically anticipating personal assistants like Alexa, Google, Cortana, Siri, etc. But it was written in 1946!

Seriously, it's uncanny.

(Though it's set in like 1974, so it got things off by about 40 years.)

"A Logic Named Joe" by Murray Leinster first published in the March 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
From Wiki: The story's narrator is a "logic repairman" nicknamed Ducky. A "logic" is a computer-like device described as looking "like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get".

In the story, a logic whom Ducky names Joe develops some degree of sapience and ambition. Joe proceeds to switch around a few relays in "the tank" (one of a distributed set of central information repositories), and cross-correlate all information ever assembled – yielding highly unexpected results. It then proceeds to freely disseminate all of those results to everyone on demand (and simultaneously disabling all of the content-filtering protocols). Logics begin offering up unexpected assistance to everyone which includes designing custom chemicals that alleviate inebriation, giving sex advice to small children, and plotting the perfect murder.
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Full Text HERE.

Dimension-X/X-1 radio dramatization HERE. (And HERE too I think.)

And on Youtube HERE.
 
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Indeed. I show this one to people just to freak them out with how on-point the predictions are. Search engines, parental controls, Leinster predicted it all. (Leinster's real name was Will Jenkins) He coined the term "first contact", wrote the seminal alternate timeline story, penned the novel on which the TV series "Time Tunnel" was based. He was also involved in the technical end of film/TV production and invented a few things in that arena.
 
E-DUB said:
penned the novel on which the TV series "Time Tunnel" was based
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In fact, Leinster's 1964 novel Time Tunnel was unrelated to the the 1966-7 TV series The Time Tunnel -- however, the makers of the TV series did hire him to write a loose novelization of the show, perhaps as compensation for duplicating his title.
 
NCC-73515 said:
and bttf2 thought we're using fax in every room XD
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What I find hilarious is how they assumed in the late '80s and early '90s (in things like BTTF2, Total Recall, and "Lisa's Wedding" on The Simpsons) that telephones in the future would become bigger, more complicated-looking, and less portable. They all have these enormous, heavy videophone units festooned with controls, and in TR the one portable video communicator we see is the size of a briefcase.
 
It's like how Fahrenheit 451 predicted that we'd have TVs we could hang on the wall, mini media devices in our ears to listen to music with and people obsessed with interactive stories instead of talking to each other!
 
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There was an episode of SeaQuest DSV (Season 2) that had the crew finding a future earth where wars were fought with videogames and VR headsets and everyone was in their own house.
 
tomswift2002 said:
that had the crew finding a future earth where wars were fought with videogames and VR headsets and everyone was in their own house.
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There's a pretty good novel Ben Bova wrote in 1969 called The Dueling Machine, the premise being that instead of settling disputes physically, one could go into a booth to wear down their anger and aggression by meeting it out in a virtual experience, the idea that the world would be a more peaceful place if nobody actually got into physical contact. The machines are supposed to not hurt any of the opponents, but of course, the twist being that this one time, someone actually ends up dying in one and then an investigation is underway to figure out what happened.

Dueling as a means of settling disputes has been revived by the invention of the dueling machine, which allows two adversaries to have at each other in the imaginary world of their choosing, with no danger to either other than humiliation and the loss of the point in dispute—until the Kerak Worlds found a way to kill with the machine. Unless a young Star Watchman can solve the mystery, the warlike Kerak Worlds will gobble up the planets of the Acquataine Cluster, murdering its leaders one at a time, and then be ready for the Terrans themselves...
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All before the Holodeck or even Cyberpunk. Oh and apparently it's available on Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30796
 
Owain Taggart said:
All before the Holodeck or even Cyberpunk.
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Oh, Arthur C. Clarke essentially predicted virtual-reality online gaming in The City and the Stars in 1956. The book opens with the protagonist and his friends engaged in an adventure that turns out to be an immersive simulation that they're playing from their respective homes, like a quest party in an MMORPG.
 
I'm kind of glad we don't have flying cars. People are idiots enough in two dimensions. And I'm pretty sure, but it's a long time since I read it that Leinster's original novel was the inspiration for Time Tunnel. And he wrote two tie-ins to the series.
 
The internet, social media stalking and machine learning algorithms as well. Though it is funny to see the references to relays nowadays.

E-DUB said:
I'm kind of glad we don't have flying cars. People are idiots enough in two dimensions.
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I suppose the coming autonomous vehicles could make flying cars feasible if the propulsion were to prove viable.
 
E-DUB said:
And I'm pretty sure, but it's a long time since I read it that Leinster's original novel was the inspiration for Time Tunnel.
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From what I can find online, that's disputed at best. Both the novel and Irwin Allen's initial series synopsis date from 1964, but I can't find out which one came first. (The novel came out in July, so there's a bit less than a 50% chance that the synopsis came after it.) The show has nothing whatsoever in common with the book aside from the title and the general concept of time travel; if anything, the show owes more to another 1964 work, Ib Melchior's film The Time Travelers. The most I can find is speculation that 20th Century Fox bought the rights to the title from Leisner and/or hired him to do the novelizations as compensation, but apparently there's no documented proof of that happening.

Honestly, I suspect the main inspiration behind TTT was the desire to do a budget-saving show built around leftover historical costumes, props, and set pieces in the Fox warehouse and stock footage from various historical films. Although from what I read, it turned out to be Allen's most expensive show somehow, which is why it didn't get a second season.

And he wrote two tie-ins to the series.
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That's right -- the second one was called The Time Tunnel # 2: Timeslip! Both novels were in the vein of many '60s novelizations or tie-ins, taking massive liberties with the premise and continuity of the show. The first was a partial adaptation of the pilot, but the second was all-new.
 
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