First off, I will have to say this was a very difficult read for me. The grammar left much to be desired and I had to read the first few paragraphs multiple times just to figure out what the author was talking about. Joe appears to be a futuristic robot that was not yet invented, and merely a story derived from someone's imagination long ago.
Logic appears to be the internal workings of the robot, the “Motherboard” in terms of today's technologies. It provides all of the thinking and decision making for the robot, and processes the inputted information to a state that is comprehensible to the users. This seems to coincide a lot with today’s modern computer. The logic also appears to be capable of input from something similar to a keyboard, as the author eludes to “It looks like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get”. I interpreted the tank to be a big database, possibly connected to other databases, that provides information on any subject matter you would like to explore, and even provides current information such as the weather. This appears to me to be a direct relationship with the thought of having information at the touch of your fingertips, which would have been very convenient for someone to conceive that notion long ago. Of course we know this to be very true today; it's called the world wide web. Yesterdays imagination has becomes today's reality. The author also points to a "Station SNAFU" which appears to be like today's modern web cam. This device enabled the robot to connect to other robots across a network and appears to allow live viewing in some fashion or another.
I found it interesting that even back at the time this was written, they were talking about counterfeiting, and the demand for it was one of the popular searches. This is probably something we would think of today as modern Google searches, and while tracking the most popular subjects searched for on the web, counterfeiting seems to come out on a consistent basis. However, we all know this popular search is much different than counterfeiting.
Online baking also appears to be a foretold tale, as there is an instance where circuits are are transferring credit card balances from bank to bank, possibly causing people to go bankrupt. I would have to think that credit cards probably existed back then, or at least the notion of them, but this story goes a step further in the assumption that credit card use was wide spread, maybe to the extent they are used in modern times. This also fits right in with the modern day hacking of computer equipment. Someone appeared to be breaking into the “tank” causing destruction to the banking system. The tank is ordered for immediate shutdown, but it just can not happen. The tank has been doing the computing for businesses for years. This reminds one a lot of today's networks. The loss of technologies or the network to a business would be catastrophic. We have grown so accustomed to technology that our daily lives are immersed in them, so you have to wonder if society could carry on if for some reason it all disappeared one day. It certainly would have a profound effect on the economies of the world, and it may be thought of in terms of large natural disasters like the Great Depression.
Logic in this story is not compatible with what we deem to be computer technologies; it seemed to have a mind of its own, like something that you might consider in a science fiction story of a robot being created that can think and make choices on its own. I'm sure there are programs advanced enough to begin this process, but they are not wide spread and leave a lot to the imagination about the future. It's interesting to think of how advanced and technology driven the world is today, then after reading a story like this, thinking of what someone thought the future may look like, and comparing it to what we may have to look forward to, is just mind boggling. It's hard to imagine that in 50 years we may look back at today’s technologies and laugh at them.
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