Arthur Clark on the Internet, 1968

Arthur Clark, "Space Odyssey 2001", 1968

Missing in flight did not have to. Charter to read official reports, memorable notes and protocols, Floyd included his newspaper tablet in the ship’s information network and looked through the world's largest electronic newspapers one by one. He remembered their code signals by heart, and he didn’t even have to look at the back wall of the tablet, where their list was printed. Turning on the tablet's short-term storage device, he delayed the image of the next page on the screen, quickly ran through the headlines and noted articles that interest him. Each article had its two-digit code number - once you typed it on the tablet keyboard, like a tiny rectangle of the article, it instantly increased to the size of a screen as large as a sheet of writing paper, providing complete readability. After reading one article, Floyd again included the entire page and chose another.

He asked himself a question more than once: is it possible that a newspaper tablet with a fantastically sophisticated technology, hiding behind the simplicity of its use, is not the last word in a man’s incessant desire for the perfection of communications? What more could you ask for? Take at least it, Floyd: far in space, carrying away from Earth at a speed of many thousands of kilometers per hour, he can press one or two buttons - and after a few milliseconds, read the headlines of any newspaper. By the way, in this era of electronics and the very word "newspaper", of course, became an anachronism. Text hourly automatically updated. Even if you read only newspapers in English, you can only do all your life to absorb this ever-renewing stream of information coming from communication satellites.
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It was difficult to imagine a system more perfect and convenient. And yet, probably, sooner or later, a newspaper tablet will become obsolete and will be supplanted by something as inconceivable as the tablet itself would be inconceivable for Kexton [The first English book printer (1424-1491)] or Gutenberg.

And one more thought often came to Floyd's mind when these tiny electronic lines appeared on the screen in front of him. The more advanced the technology of information transfer, the more ordinary, vulgar, gray its content becomes. Accidents, crimes, catastrophes and natural disasters, the threat of armed conflict, the gloomy forecasts of editorial articles - this was what the millions of words that erupted on the air every minute carried in them. However, Floyd thought that this might be half the trouble: he had long since come to the conclusion that newspapers would be unbearably boring in an ideal Utopia.

It is especially surprising to read it on a tablet or laptop by connecting via Wi-Fi "to the information network" of the coffee shop :) And the highlighted becomes especially obvious when you come across flickering placers of yellow media banners and diaries of the stars of Lirushka.