I've thought that something like the internet might have emerged from teletype networks absent the WWII-accelerated development of digital computers. As computing technology was (more gradually) refined, it could perhaps be meshed with the expanded teletype system (remember dial-up?). On a more tangential note, in the late 1940's Vannevar Bush advocated scanning all/nearly all text onto microfilm and widely distributing the viewers, which would be automated where possible for ease of use.