Mr. Heinlein was a hydraulic engineer. Mr. Clarke has been a member of the British interplanetary association for years. When Dr. Clarke first wrote about communication sattelites in 1946, he did so in a fiction format. Science fiction is often used to broach ideas that would be ridiculed if they were place in professional journals. A projective analysis of trends is always a tool of any scientific endeavor.
Information technology is no different.
I might suggest that for pure amusement, some of the correspondents might read A.E. Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle. Mr. Minsky has the right perspective on futuristics. It represents actual progress in a field.