One interesting point about “The Feeling of Power” – it is the first use of the term “pocket calculator.”
That is interesting. It would be even more interesting if it was true.
Well …OK… if you say so, but aren’t you supposed to point to a link or make a some statement of fact supporting your opposing point at this juncture?
Is this what you’re thinking of circa 1948 vs story date of 1958.
My favourite line form The Feeling Of Power:
Sorry, I should have made myself a little clearer. The term “pocket calculator” does not appear anywhere in the story making it impossible for it to be the first use of the phrase. The phrase “pocket computer” is used twice, but not “pocket calculator”.
In an early Star Trek episode there’s a great scene of Spock using a slide rule, and of course being ever so serious about it.
–Cliffy
I recall a story about an administrator of a moon colony or something, and in the office they were using typewriters and carbon paper.
I think this is an Asimov story as well, titled “Someday”. The children had a robot-like device called a Bard that told stories about fairies and elves, so one kid re-programmed it. Someone more web-savvy will undoubtedly post a link.
There is an episode of the newer Outer Limits series about a future where vitrually everyone is attached to something called “The Stream”; it’s a bit like the Internet, but far more vast and powerful. If you want to know what is in a book, you log on to The Stream and it downloads the contents of the book into your memory in a few seconds. If you want to go to a restaurant, you log on, “read” its menu, and place your order before you get there.
The hero is a young man who is quite bright but who, due to a childhood injury, is unable to have a connector to The Stream implanted in his head. He is pitied as a freak because he has to use phones, but admired as a genius because he knows how to read a phone book. He has a job transferring books into the data bank of The Stream.
I recall that when I was in grade school in the mid-60s my class read a one act play by Isaac Asimov about a computer called “The Bard”; perhaps the play was called Someday, or perhaps it was only based on a story by that name.
The main characters were two boys, one of whom is tinkering with an old Bard he played with as a younger child; it is a television-like device which makes up stories. His friend tells him about how a man he knows is telling him how to write numbers. At first the other kid doesn’t understand how a written figure could be a number, and then doesn’t get the point to using written figures since computers can just tell you the answers you need.
At the end of the story the kids walk off and The Bard switches on and recites a fairy tale. It is about how people got lazy and spoiled and degenerated into a bunch of dullards without much understanding or imagination.
Asimov also wrote a great short story called “The Immortal Bard” about Shakespeare being brought into the future where he promptly takes a college course in Shakespeare and, predictably, doesn’t do too well.