"If only there was some kind of..."

Besides Why, in my day... , the other Slashdot meme from yesteryear that never failed to amuse is "If only there was|were some kind of..." However, Google, Kagi, and even Slashdot's own site search were all coming up empty. To satisfy nostalgia, cobbled together these stylized versions with Claude Opus 4.6: If only there were some kind of enormous, interconnected network of computers, perhaps…