On Thu, 10 Sep 2020 23:34:37 +0000, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> Or, if you want to go back in time, there's "The Machine Stops",
> written by E.M. Forster in 1909.  The main character uses a
> communication device that looks a lot like an iPad.
>
I remember reading that many decades ago, but didn't remember who wrote
it: the only stuff of his I remember are "Room With A View" and "A
Passage to India".

> "The Feeling of Power", written by Isaac Asimov in 1958, perfectly
> predicted the atrophy of basic arithmetic skills.
>
... 'a breakthrough on the square root font' indeed!

> The one thing these authors couldn't have predicted was the incredible
> fall in the price of electronics - which made these dystopias not only
> possible, but arguably inevitable.

 Just found a copy and reread it, and one thing Asimov didn't even
remotely forsee when he wrote that in the late 1950s was the low cost and
high speed with which solid state electronics could be churned out.

The point that really stood out on rereading it was the comment that it
takes much longer to build the computers that control the spaceships and
missiles than the build the hulls and engines - exactly the opposite of
the current day when its faster and cheaper to build a car that uses
digital electronics to link its throttle pedal to the engine or to
control its gearbox than to fit a mechanical throttle linkage or use a
mechanical automatic gearbox. All of which is odd since the store assumes
that everybody would have a digital calculator in his pocket, which
implies that they'd be quick and cheap to make - yet the story was
written at least ten years before the first pocket calculators were
around.

The HP-35, IIRC the first scientific/engineering pocket calculator to be
available, appeared in 1972. I still have a working HP-21, its successor,
that I bought in 1976.



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Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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