In 1974 the Australian TV outfit, ABC, conducted an interview with the famous SF author Arthur C. Clarke (author of among other things, 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the reporter had his little boy with him and asked Clarke what he thought the boy would be dealing with in 2001 and because they were standing in the middle of a computer centre, Clarke focused on that.

He’s also asked about the social impact of computer predictions, the reporter expressing concern about becoming a computer-dependent society, but Clarke responds only by talking of being able to live and conduct business from anywhere in the world. The actual social impacts, especially on children, of apps like Facebook, Tik Tok, Twitter, Tumblr, and other and their algorithms that guide one down rabbit holes, is something that we’re only really coming to grips now almost twenty five years past his prediction point.

Still, it’s an impressive prediction and I’d say he pretty much nailed the Internet – except for all the cat pictures of course – and he lived long enough (2008) to see much of it come to fruition.