Well, I've been giving myself a bit of a history lesson and figured I would share some of what I've been finding because, to be honest, it makes me kind of excited for the future :-)

First off, I was listening to a lecture (which I'm at a loss to track down again right now, but when I find a link to it, I'll post it here) and the speaker mentioned JCR Licklider- a very interesting and vital part of the early development of the networking systems that have grown into the Internet today. Check out the entry on him on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licklider
He wrote a paper all the way back in 1960 called "Man-Computer Symbiosis" you can read it here:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html
There's also a short (30 minute) documentary from 1972 covering the key concepts of networks with Licklider that someone uploaded to Google Video here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4989933629762859961

It's all very fascinating, especially because it emphasises open networks and the free exchange of information. A current development of which is the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project that you can check out here:
http://www.laptop.org/
With much discussion, both for and against the project, here:
http://wiki.laptop.org

So that should get you thinking, it sure got me thinking... :-)