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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2437 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 9, 2025

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Late for a small scale question- might repost on this Sunday’s thread- but does anyone know of speculative fiction or essays from the eighties about computers in the mid term future, and how they affect society in non-apocalyptic ways? Obviously there’s Terminator, but computers were a big deal at the time and I kind of want to see how sober minded people forecast them to affect society?

"True Names" by Vernor Vinge (1981), which develops the concept of cyberspace. Vinge was a computer scientist, and it comes through in his writing.

William Gibson seems like an obvious choice. He was writing stories about the internet before the internet even existed. The Burning Chrome anthology and the Sprawl trilogy would be your best bet for those.

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