A novel where computers and telephones have been unified is Niven & Pournelle's "The Mote in God's eye" (1974). The device is only marginally dealt with, but everybody has a portable minicomputer, that can record video, work as a telephone and connect to bigger machines (mainframes) via telephone grid or infrared; in the novel it is so common as to be considered absolutely normal. Maybe the truth is not that Sf did not foresee the Internet. It was somewhat given for granted. When they first explained to me what it could and couldn't do I thought "Ok, they did it *at last*!" Umberto Rossi Se non sei sul web, hai torto! If you're not on the web, you're wrong!
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