Allerede i 1851 skrev Nathaniel Hawthorne i The House of the Seven Gables:
"Is it a fact - or have I dreamt it - that by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence. or, shall we say, it itself a thought, nothing but a thought, and no longer the substance which we deemed it!"
Det er kanskje poeter som best kan spå om fremtiden?
En rekke andre spådommer finnes også.
"The time is close at hand when the scattered members of civilized communities will be as closely united, so far as instant telephonic communication is concerned, as the various members of the body now are by the nervous system,"
'The Future of the Telephone' Scientific American, 1880.
En historisk oversikt finnes i Dave Marshalls tidslinje.