I like moments when timelines seem to be fractured, when unexpected contexts are jammed together (recognising that it might only be my ignorance that makes them unexpected). Things like Evelyn Waugh's attendance at Haile Selassie's coronation or Bing Crosby's pivotal role in the development of the tape recorder. You know what I mean? We make assumptions about boundaries, sometimes we're wrong, these like these should challenge our assumptions.
I got such a feeling leafing through a copy of Understanding Hypermedia I found in our garage. I remember this book very fondly. There was a time when this was as close as you got to most computer design - you'd never seen most of the interfaces and ideas it described - and it looked like the future should look.
But you look at it now and the first thing you realise is - there's no internet in it at all.
And that's probably excusable, it was written in 1992. Pre-Mosaic, pre-Canter and Siegel, only just post-Gopher.
On the other hand, the internet had been a word since 1982, CompuServe had been a consumer network since the 1980s, the Queen had sent an email in 1976.
I can't work it out. Did they miss something obvious (because, you know, designers) or did the web just blindside people so utterly and completely?
It's hard to tell anymore.