Futurist Isaac Asimov

Did Isaac Asimov foresee the advent of Google, Wikipedia and the like?

Isaac Asimov

“Once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries where anyone can ask any question and be given answers, be given reference materials, be something you’re interested in knowing, from an early age, however silly it might seem to someone else… that’s what YOU are interested in, and you can ask, and you can find out, and you can do it in your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction, in your own time… Then, everyone would enjoy learning. Nowadays, what people call learning is forced on you, and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class, and everyone is different.” ~ Isaac Asimov
 http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/01/28/isaac-asimov-creativity-education-science/

Having a firm grasp of the technological aspects afforded to the world by the proliferation of personal computers, Isaac Asimov certainly envisioned the educational advantages that were about to be realized. He would no doubt approve of the direction computer technology has taken us for the most part.

He also understood the potential for abuses of any technology, especially one that could reach into every household in the world. As one of the most productive authors of our time, he spanned the realms of impossibilities as well as practicalities. It seems as though all things are quite possible in his mind, where the depth of his vision could only be described as boundless.