A scientist for NASA, named David Brin, wrote a book called "Earth" in, I believe 1988, that detailed something like this pretty accurately. Basically, all the people in the story just tap into the internet and run these crazy like free energy-mind "search engines". Like image having a laptop the size of a blue tooth with a retractable screen to view any little thing your mind can dream up.
I highly recommend this book to all Neatorama readers as the whole book is about NASA creating fields of science that create, and manipulate black holes.