Arthur C. Clarke

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 – 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, futurist, inventor, and explorer. He co-wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke was an avid popularizer and proponent of space travel, and a distinguished futurist. Together with Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov they were the "Big Three" of science fiction.

His predictions included:
 * telecommunication satellites
 * a "global library", a global computer network and future of ubiquitous computing reminiscent of the modern Internet
 * a "personal transceiver, so small and compact that every man carries one"
 * surgery that could be accomplished remotely and instantaneously from anywhere in the world using internet and satellite communication.
 * online banking and shopping, and "a computer... a console through which he can talk... and get all the information he needs, for his everyday life, like his bank statements, his theatre reservations, all the information you need in the course of living in our complex modern society, this will be in a compact form in his own house... and he will take it as much for granted as we take the telephone."

Clarke's three laws:
 * When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
 * The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
 * Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.