Slate has an interesting essay by Lawrence Krauss that covers basic points about how science fiction doesn’t/can’t truly predict the future, with an interesting point how the internet arose as a tool to coordinate very complex scientific experiments:
Indeed, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the internet is that necessity was the mother of its invention. As particle physics experiments became bigger, with larger collaborations spread around the world, the need for disparate groups to collaborate and share data arose. Thus began the World Wide Web, initiated at CERN, the home of what is now the world’s largest particle accelerator: the Large Hadron Collider.
