"Other names for the 'net" Topic

I'm trying to think up names for what would be the internet in the distant future. I know that a bunch of sci fi books have different names for their version of the internet but for the life of me I can't remember which ones.

So far I've come up with:

- OmniNet
- VRnet
- The Grid

If anyone can remember any names that science fiction writers, (or anyone else), have used to describe an information network in one form or another that would be great.

How about:

omniponet

I think I just made that up?

CommWeb was the 'Net in the James Schmitz Vegan Hub universe.

Peter Hamilton has an ultra fast quantum-entangled system called the Datasphere that literally pulls any information from any connected system as soon as it is entered: Thus, many writers and other creative people no longer work unless they can use low tech apparatus and then get paid for the results.

Asimov's Univac eventually became an information system that resembled the Wikipedia and Google functions of the real-world 'Net- Charcaters constantly look up vital information through Univac outlets.

It will probably stay as Internet.
None of the cool stuff from science fiction ever becomes real, and that includes names. Only the dreary and drudgy.
How many sci fi writers ever predicted that the Internet woulo virtually wipe out printed porn?
How many predicted Facebook, tweeting and 13 year old girls texting the winners on American Idol?
Precious few.

no one predicted the great breakthrough in communications would be a phonecall which you type……

what ever happened to a butler delivering a handwritten note?

regards

jim

Firefly's net was the Cortex.

Matrix?

Skynet?

Mother.

It's the Holonet in Star Wars (at least in Expanded Universe materials).

Chris

There is a semi-sentient version in Infinity called the evolved intelligence or something like that.

The network system has already become so pervasive that people increasingly don't refer to it at all. Teenaged girls don't say they are going to "text on the Internet," celebrities don't say "I think I'll go embarrass myself on a tweet on the Internet."

When we search, we don't think, "I need to google on the Internet for a 15mm scale panzer II."

My suspicion is it's going to become even more pervasive and nameless than it is now.

"A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and all the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across the colorless void…"

Bob

From Vernor Vinge: The Net of a Million Lies.

The Matrix of course.

GOD?

Link

Grid

Intersection (section)

Nexus

Sphere

Cycle

TMP

Webnet

Logrus

But Waco Joe is right

Bob

thanks guys.

There is a semi-sentient version in Infinity called the evolved intelligence or something like that.

Not quite. The regular 'net is called Maya, the secure network owned by the Nomad Nation is called Arachne.

The AI running on Maya is Aleph, and the evil alien AI is the 'EI'. The Nomads don't trust any AI to run the show, so their network doesn't have an overall AI on it.

The InterWeb?

Frank Herbert noted that technical words always become shorter and more generic as time, common usage and repetition wore on; laser gun became lazgun, etc. We still use a lot of outdated words for new things: YouTube holds videos. Video used to mean video tape, but it doesn't refer to DVD. HD-DVD disappeared probably because it was too much of a mouthful. Blu-Ray doesn't seem to have made much headway; you get a movie "on" Blu-Ray, but do you go to rent a Blu-Ray? Probably, the proliferation of names will force people to fall back on what's familiar and what applies to them all: video files, DVDs and Blu-Rays all contain "movies." Thus we now talk about watching a "movie" first, then discuss the how later – internet piracy, rent, buy, Blu-Ray, actual cinema. Proliferation of technology only reduces the likelihood that these words will be used. Things like Facebook and Twitter don't have a word to descibe what they are, other than "social media." Simply because they predominate, and their marketing memes have hacked our brains, we use "Facebook" as a verb.

Thus, the archaic term "movie," short for "moving picture," continues to be used. Like "internet" versus the "world wide web," movie won out over "bioscope." Simply because, in English, it's easier to say "movie" and still understand it. "Web" still persists in some usages of the term – web browser, website and so on. Like John the OFM says, nobody's going to coin a new word for something unless it's radically different. Even now, we don't go the the trivision – we watch a movie. In 3D. Which is what the cinemas trumpeted back in the 50s with their red/blue glasses. Unless it's fundamentally different, the old word will stick.

Firefly's 'Verse has the Cortex, possibly because it evolved out of something called "Cortex Inter-Ship Communcations System" or even the brand name for the comms network between the ships. To the colonists, the "net" was something they left behind on Earth with its petabytes of Facebook photos and Farmville. So to them, their net became the "Cortex" because to their minds it was different (even though the tech was the same). Just like we have jam on our bread and Americans have jelly on theirs, even though it's the same thing.

Oh yes, and they sprinkle 'erbs on their food instead of herbs.

EMI (Energy Material Information) Grid -- the Therians from AT-43. Since the Therians are us, it's just an evolution of the internet.

The crystal wind (Daniel Keyes Moran's 'Continuing time' stories) is another one. Hackers who play in it are called 'webdancers'.

Lampyridae, as descendant of jam and jelly makers, I object to you continuing this pernicious lie that jam and jelly are the same thing. Jams are not filtered and contain real fruit parts, such as flesh and seeds ( look at real raspberry jam or feel your teeth after eating it :).) Jellies are filtered and contain only the juice of the fruit with added pectin.

As to why the virtual disappearance of true jam in the US in favour of jelly, I have heard no explanation – though the orange cheese is an easy one . . .

Fascinating. I always thought they were the same thing.

According to QI there was a roaring trade in dodgy raspberry jam in late Victorian London.

Apparently it was made out of random cheap vegetables and lots of sugar and food colouring. The pips were faked by making them out of tiny bits of wood, with the carving done by an army of ill-paid urchins. All this rigmarole was still far cheaper than buying real raspberries so the fakers were coining it in. Maybe explains why Brits want proper fruit-bits in their jam?

To go with the shortening of words, how about the IN. Either you are plugged IN or you are out.
You either have gadgets that let you IN or you are out of the loop.

Lampyridae, sorry for the outburst nature – They are indeed different, though there's confusion abounding.

Timbo W – oh, yes, food quality has been a long term problem; There's a poem from the time that covers it neatly -

Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Makes the milkman wealthy
And the grocer grand.

Of course, the name of the substance changes with the type of bits in it – if it has citrus peel in it, then it's called sweet marmalade. :)