Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my own head.
And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him.
-from "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov
Before spring break, I received a packet in the mail from one of my readers--a member of the faculty. Inside I found a photocopy of "Superiority", a science fiction short by Arthur C. Clark, a memo from the FSU bookstore to the faculty addressing textbook ordering protocols and a note from the professor, believe it or not, that tied it all together.
Apparently, the bookstore has recently instituted a 19 step online process for textbook requisition through the store's website. Once upon a time, this took scrawling an ISBN or title/author on a piece of paper and sending it on its merry way.
Not anymore. It seems that administrative technology has intervened.
What does this have to do with science fiction, with Asimov and Clark? Both authors had much to say about the role of technology in our lives. Science fiction can be a clairvoyant tool for social diagnosis.
Clark's story, the one I was sent, is about two warring societies in an unstated future, gridlocked by almost identical technical capabilities. When the lead military researcher of one faction dies, his successor decides to take the opportunity to revolutionize and replace their existing weapon systems, surpassing their enemy in pure higher tech.
His idea ends up losing his faction the war. Their enemy's "low tech" weapons were sufficient to incapacitate the nation while they researched and tested new technologies.
Basically, Clark is saying the following: If the existing technology works well, why upgrade? If newer technology is just flashier (or even worse, an institutional "standard") but essentially performs the same function with the same efficiency, then perhaps the existing technology, though "low tech", is superior.
We are in a time where we are probed and pounded daily by advertisers telling us to upgrade--mainly by going bigger or smaller on phones, TVs, computers, etc. I often wonder just how useful all of this technology actually is. How much does it improve our quality of life?
I suspect that making the faculty jump through 19 electronic hoops to simply order a book is unnecessary and conforming to some sort of standard.There are a couple of things that will never be replaced by technology, no matter how much we advance. One is a book. Imagine a portable apparatus that would allow you to read any more efficiently than you can already when paging through a paperback.
The other is the intuitive, creative nature of the human mind. This will never be replicated because of its inherent elusiveness. When you have an idea for a painting or a story or a clever riff, can you express to someone where it came from? When the pieces of a puzzle or problem suddenly fall into place, can you explain the process? No on both accounts, at least when it comes to ultimate origin.
This ties back to the quote at the beginning of this article. Asimov's story is similar to Clark's, in the sense that two factions are at war and at an impasse. Computers are so advanced that they are constantly guessing the other's next move, and so nothing is done.
That is, until a young technician is ushered in to a leading politician's office. At the politician's request, the tech solves a seemingly simple multiplication problem: nine times seven is 63. The politician can't believe it. He checks his calculator. The tech is right.
They go on to win the war, as the enemy computers cannot guess their moves; it cannot track the unpredictable nature of the humans' problem solving.
When incorporating technologies into our lives, we should make an immediate distinction: Does this software, cell phone, PDA or appliance augment and speed my natural ability to accomplish something or does it attempt to replace it, catalogue it and ultimately slow my processes? Is the technology we're using taking away this "feeling of power" we get from using our own minds and physical abilities to solve problems and administrate?
I'll write more about this, specifically addressing blogging, in a second part later this week.
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Your summary of the ending of Asimov's story is rather off, and certainly changes the very dark tone:
The general was saying, "Our goal is a simple one, gentlemen - the replacement of the computer. [...] And I see something even beyond this. It may be fantastic now, a mere dream, but in the future I see the manned missile! [...] a missile with a man or two within, controlling flight by graphitics, would be lighter, more mobile, more intelligent. [...] A man is much more dispensable than a computer. Manned missiles could be launched in numbers and under circumstances that no good general would care to undertake as far as computer-directed missiles are concerned . . .""
He said much more, but Technician Aub did not wait.
Technician Aub, in the privacy of his quarters, labored long over the note he was leaving behind. It read finally as follows:
"When I began the study of what is now called graphitics, it was no more than a hobby. I saw no more in it than an interesting amusement, an exercise of mind.
"When Project Number began, I thought that others were wiser than I, that graphitics might be put to practical use as a benefit to mankind, to aid in the production of really practical mass-transference devices perhaps. But now I see it is to be used only for death and destruction.
"I cannot face the responsibility involved in having invented graphitics."
He then deliberately turned the focus of a protein depolarizer on himself and fell instantly and painlessly dead.
(The full text of the short story is available online.)
I still used slide rules after pocket calculators came out. What happened to my slipsticks? They got stolen one by one. Now, with a computer in my lap, I really miss my slide rules.
I could set one up and have it at hand, automatically scaling two things together all along the scale -- all possible values of the same ratio -- which I could study without touching.
An old friend, retired a decade ago, could work a slide rule in his head. He was so familiar with its use he could do multiplication and division by envisioning logarithmic scales.
And now? Every time I get a new DVD/TV/VHS it gets harder to get simple things done.
The tone of the ending is irrelevant for my purposes, I think. Asimov was making the point that in some way all knowledge is used for war, but this was an essay on the use (as in utility) of technology, not the ethics of its use.
That is another story.
As the only commenter here who has coedited a book with Sir Arthur C. Clarke, been published in an anthology by Isaac Asimov, and brought Dr. Asimov with me as my guest on an appearance on the NBC-TV Today show, live to 10,000,000 people, I shall more to say about this later.
Right now I've got to drive 70 miles roundtrip to deliver my application for a tenure track professorship.
There is a connection, but it will take time to elucidate.
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/authorsP.html#JonPost
vos Post, you contributed nothing to the discussion and only managed to stroke your own ego. In a word, who cares.
Okay, now that I'm back from the school to which I applied -- 50 pages of transcript annotations, essays, letters of recommendations making a kind of science fiction -- here's the publication of mine that puts "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov in context. The question is, what did Science Fiction get right, and what did it miss in predicting the future of one technology in particular: computers? The references given are all worth reading, attached as I am to my analysis of them.
Writing the Future: Computers in Science Fiction. By Jonathan Vos Post and Kirk L. Kroeker. Computer, 33(1): 29- 37 (January 2000). "Although we cannot be certain that science fiction directly influenced the course that computing technology has taken over the past 50 years, the genre has--at the very least--anticipated the technologies we're using and developing. Speculation about our future human relationship to computers-and to technology in general-has been the province of science fiction for at least a hundred years. But not all of that speculation has been as optimistic as those in the computing profession might assume. While cautionary tales in science fiction are plentiful and varied, the genre is also filled with more optimistic speculation about computer technology that will help save time, improve health, and generally benefit life as we know it. If we take a look at some of this speculation--both optimistic and pessimistic--as if it were prediction, it turns out that many science fiction authors have envisioned the future as accurately as historians have chronicled the past." - from the abstract.
REFERENCES
Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.
1 H. Ellison, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," Galaxy, 1967.
2 F. Leiber, "The 64-Square Madhouse," If, May 1962.
3 J.V. Post, "Cybernetic War," Omni, May 1979, pp. 44-104.
4 R. Feynman, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," Engineering and Science, Feb. 1960.
5 N. Stern, "The BINAC: A Controversial Milestone," From ENIAC to UNIVAC: An Appraisal of the Eckert-Mauchly Computers, Digital Press, Bedford, Mass., 1981, pp. 116-136.
6 I. Asimov, "A Feeling of Power," If, Feb. 1958.
7 David H. Levy , Alexander Henry Slocum, Portable product miniaturization and the ergonomic threshold, 1997
8 H. Fast, "The Martian Shop," The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov. 1959.
9 R.A. Heinlein, "Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon," Boy's Life, April-May 1949.
10 W. Gibson and B. Sterling, The Difference Engine, Bantam, New York, 1991.
11 A. Bierce, "Moxon's Master," The Complete Short Stories, E.J. Hopkins, ed., Doubleday, New York, 1970.
12 F. Brown, "Answer," The Best of Frederic Brown, Ballantine, New York, 1977.
13 F. Herbert, "The Tactful Saboteur," Galaxy, Oct. 1964.
14 F. Leiber, "A Bad Day for Sales," Galaxy, July 1953.
15 M. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn., 1994.
16 E.M. Forster, "The Machine Stops," The Machine Stops and Other Stories, R. Mengham, ed., Trafalgar Square, London, 1998.
17 A.C. Clarke, The City and the Stars, Signet, New York, 1957.
18 A. Andrews, "2020: The Chimera Engineer," Proc. Agile Manufacturing Conf., University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
19 C.H. Gray, ed., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge, New York & London, 1995.
Is there a nonsubscription hotlink for the full text and illustrations? Kirk L. Kroeker used to have one online, but 60 seconds of Googling did not turn this up. Not everyone has access to a brick & morter library to see this definitive analysis.
That is my favourite Asimov story.
Same here, John.
"50 pages of transcript annotations"
What is this? You had to give them transcripts of your grades? what kind of job is this?
John Wilkins: "That is my favourite Asimov story."
Asimov told me that his favorite of all his stories is "The Last Question", about the godlike growth in power of an extremely advanced computer.
He said that his favorite of his novels was "Murder at the A.B.A." although he was happy that "The Gods Themselves" is so pornographic, to the aliens, anyway. All about sex and particle physics and power politics.
His favorite TV show was -- really -- "Laverne and Shirley."
jojo: "'50 pages of transcript annotations'
What is this? You had to give them transcripts of your grades? what kind of job is this?"
The technical problem with applying for a tenure-track Math professorship is that my M.S. is not in Math. It is in "Computer and Information Science", with 53 credits in Math beyond the M.S.; but to prove that, I have to supply letters of recommendation from the Executive Officer of Math at Caltech (who happens also to be Math Advisor to the hit CBS-TV series NUMB3RS) and the former provost of Caltech, plus explaining the course content of every course I took as undergrad or grad that was arguably math. Nontrivial since, for instance, I took a Graph Theory course from the Engineering Department, and so forth.
Ideally, they'd look at all this, attached examples of my journal publications, conference publications, prestigious online publications, and literally thousands of students, and call me in for an interview. But I get fewer interviews each semster, it seems.
Gary Lorden, Executive Officer of Math at Caltech, has a theory, Ideally, the selction committee would evaluate all the resumes submitted and pick the best-qualified. But, instead, they first imagine an "ideal candidate." They are not very imaginative. Then they assign a metric to how far each resume is to the "ideal candidate." I'm a statistical outlier, with FAR more publications, and far weirder profile. So I'm rejected, with a "hard no" disqualifying me before an interview can even yield a "soft no" -- even though I might in fact be the best for their students, and the most likely to bring in research grants to more than cover my salary.
Also, it's illegal to say: "you're too old." So they can say the politically correct equivalent: "you're overqualified."
I've known people who did PhD in Biophysics who are told that they are neither wqualified for Biology nor Physics, and Planetary Science degree-holders told that they are not qualified to teach Earth Sciences, and so on. It's nuts! But it sure drives up the paperwork.