Hi,
I was wondering if someone here knows the name/author of a short story I’m looking for. The premise is that mankind loses the ability to do math in their heads. It is then discovered that some lower level office type has retained the ability and he then has to find some way to teach it to everyone else.
I could have sworn I read about it on this board a few years back. Thanks in advance.
Isaac Asimov’s “A Feeling of Power”?
Set in the midst of a stalemated inter-galactic war? And the computers running the war are at stand-still, and this little guy can do calculations (like multiplication) and get the same answer the computer does…only slower. And everyone is amazed. That the story? Must be written back in late 50s or early 60s, but I don’t know author.
Definitely Asimov’s “The Feeling of Power.” Which, incidentally, brought the phrase “pocket calculator” into the language.
Damnit, I had a second of feeling all smug from knowing the answer as soon as I saw the title. Then I look, and see I’ve been roundly trounced and outdistanced. Apparently other people read Asimov.
[eric cartman]Screw you guys![/eric cartman]
So Asimov really had something with the pocket calculators in that story. But he, like so many other writers, imagined computers going in a completely different direction than they did, with the bulk of the world’s computing power being contained in one enormous machine. (I do love the Multivac stories. Multivac is the kind of computer that, if I were a woman, I would be in love with Multivac.)
Makes me want to talk about Leinster’s “A Logic Called Joe”.
Man, I miss the future.
My favorite part of that story was the government official who asked “But is it always sixty-three?”.
What makes you say Multivac isn’t female?
And “A Logic Named Joe” is almost eerie in its prescience.
[Pulls out pocket computer]“I’ve checked it any number of times, and it’s always the same.”[/repockets]
I always liked that story. A nice coincidence is that when I opened the thread, the song I was listening to was “In the Year 2525.”
But do y’all remember the chilling part of the story? It was decided that, with this new technology, “graphitics”, they could put actual people in fighting positions, instead of relying on computer driven ships to do their fighting for them!
In the end,
Technician Aub kills himself, seeing that his invention is going to be used for war.
Too late, of course, because others were already picking it up.