Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Didn't Arthur C. Clarke Write a Story about This?

How many pages are on the internet?: A group called the World Wide Web Foundation -- appropriately founded by Tim Berners-Lee, who pretty much created the internet -- is on a quest to figure out, with some degree certainty, how big the internet really is.

6 comments:

Marsdon said...

Didn't Murray Leinster write a story about this? I'm thinking here of 'A Logic Named Joe".

Unknown said...

I was thinking of "The Nine Billion Names of God."

Dan_Luft said...

I was trying to come up with the name and yes it was "Nine Billion Names for God." I read this in that old boxed set -- The Science Fiction Hall of Fame that was supposed to honor great sci fi writing from the pre-Nebula days.

There was also a story in the books - don't know who wrote it -- called "Mimsy Where the Borogroves." about an alien learning toy that gets left in someone's back yard. A couple of small kids find it and slowly become more accustomed to alien technology and logic until they are unrecognizable to their parents and eventually disappear. This story always stuck with me and feels downright prophetic when I watch my 4-year-old daughter zip around the apps on my cell phone.

Unknown said...

That's Kuttner & Moore.

Dan_Luft said...

Thank you, I haven't read either of these stories in more than 30 years.

Todd Mason said...

Dan, there's even a half-assed, but not altogether worthless, film vesion of "Mimsy," THE LAST MIMZY (why misspelled? Dunno, trademarking?).

And Borges's "The Library of Babel" and "The Book of Sand"...