Monday, February 3, 2014

Weird But True! Netflix, Skype, Kindle Predicted in 1965

Obscure comic book foresaw rollout of Internet with stunning accuracy

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
February 3, 2014

An article in a 1965 edition of Eagle, a British comic book, predicted the arrival of the Internet with stunning accuracy, including services similar to Skype, Netflix, Kindle and Google years before the very first rudimentary ARPANET links were even established and decades before the first incarnation of the world wide web became available to the general public.



The article, entitled Computers for Everyone, predicted “world knowledge at your fingertips….as early as the 1990′s.”

“How would you like to be able to solve any mathematical problem in a fraction of a second: summon any page of any book or newspaper instantly before your eyes: have all factual information known to man at your own fingertips – all without leaving your own living room? This fantastic dream of scientific achievement may come true by the 1990s if a plan now being worked on by top scientists in this country and the U.S.A. is successful,” states the article.

Bear in mind that ARPANET, the very first rudimentary Internet communication system, was not conceived until the early 1960′s and the first ARPANET link between the University of California and the Stanford Research Institute was not established until October 1969.

More than merely predicting the arrival of the Internet as a tool of communication, the piece foresaw services like Netflix, Skype, Kindle, and even the “Internet of things” where every home appliance is linked to the world wide web.

“Your TV set, your telephone, your electricity and gas meters, and your typewriter, tape-recorder and record player. All these things will be as out of date as the gas-lamp is today, for the computer will control all power supplies to your house, your videophone link and multi-channel TV signal,” states the article.

The piece goes on to assert that the miniaturization process will solve the problem of computers being the size of rooms, while the “installation of the complex nationwide network of connections between the computers” will be the biggest challenge.

The arrival of high speed fiber optic connections is even predicted when the article speaks of a new system that, “carries thousands of times more information than a cable at close to the speed of light.”


Click for enlargement.

In summary, the article predicted at least seven fundamental aspects of the Internet, some of which are still only in their early stages today, a full four years before the very first arcane Internet-style communications were even tested, three decades before the Internet became accessible for the general public, and four decades before we saw services like Skype, Netflix and so-called ‘smart’ products.

- “World knowledge at your fingertips” (the search engine).

- “Summon any page of any book or newspaper instantly before your eyes” (Kindle).

- “The computer will control all power supplies to your house” (smart home, Internet of things).

- “Videophone” (Skype).

- “Multi-channel TV signal” (Netflix, Internet TVs).

- Computers/Internet to replace “Tape recorder and record player” (Spotify, iTunes).

- Network to operate at speed of light (fiber optic).

All of these were predicted 50 years ago by a children’s comic book! Weird, but true.

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