
"The Feeling Of Power" by Isaac Asimov - RiderOfGiraffes
http://downlode.org/Etext/power.html
======
RiderOfGiraffes
When people argue whether it's necessary, useful or desirable for programmers
to know anything about assembly language and the internals of CPUs, I always
think of this story.

~~~
gcheong
Nice coincidence as I've just started going through the book "Elements of
Computer Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles" by Nisan
and Schocken.

~~~
kbob
I did that last year. It was absolutely awesome fun. I already knew 90% of how
it works, but hadn't connected the dots myself before.

------
RevRal
This, and "The Machine Stops" by E M Forster
(<http://www.plexus.org/forster/index.html>) are my two favorite science
fiction shorts.

Both very relevant, and slightly humorous where we surpassed the technology in
the stories. A computer weighs more than two humans! And _still_ has crippled
computing power. Makes me smile every time.

*Edit: Asimov probably imagined our missiles looking like this: <http://www.yellow-llama.com/wp-content/uploads/harddrive.jpg> . That dish washer being the hard drive (is actually a hard drive). And minus the humans inside.

~~~
johnaspden
Upvoted for "The Machine Stops". What vision from 1908! I notice that it's
copyright EMF 1947. Any idea what that means? There's something about 'dying
in France' that made me think of the Great War.

~~~
Scriptor
And to think, this is by the same author who wrote _A Passage to India_ ,
which is in the entirely different genre. It's amazing that someone who wasn't
even a science fiction writer could have such skill at seeing the future.

------
jacquesm
That's a very moving and worthwhile read, not just because of the practical
matter discussed, but also because of the shadow side of any 'advance' in
technology.

~~~
kalid
I agree -- it's easy to forget the tradeoffs technology & specialization gives
us. The fact that we spent years learning to read, write, do math, etc. means
that most of us don't know much about farming and wilderness survival compared
to our ancestors. They'd probably be shocked at our lack of knowledge in these
"basic life skills".

~~~
ars
But we didn't loose the very concept of being able to do such a thing. We
can't do it ourself, but we know where to start, how to learn it, etc.

~~~
run4yourlives
A vast majority of modern people would die a helpless death relived of their
modern inconveniences. You don't get time to "learn" how to farm when you
don't have any food.

And farming is only 1 or 2 generations removed. Give it a few more turns, and
one can easily see the world in the story becoming a reality.

~~~
jacquesm
I've lived on a farm for a couple of years (in Ontario), and it is simply
amazing how much hard work goes in to making a piece of land productive, even
with modern tools.

In aerodynamics as applied to jet aircraft they have something called the
coffin corner, a speed so close to the limits of the flight envelope in all
directions that a small change in velocity will make you either stall or break
up.

It's possible that there is such a thing as 'societies coffin corner', a speed
of development so great that if it gets exceeded by a little or drops for a
short time that we'll literally crash.

~~~
robotrout
That sounds like a plot for a Crichton novel. I like it.

~~~
jerf
Vernor Vinge's stories have addressed a very similar idea. "A Deepness in the
Sky" has significant interludes on this topic, though it's not the main focus
of the work.

------
jimbokun
I'm put in mind of when I worked at a bank, hearing stories of people who's
job was to plug numbers into a spreadsheet or program, and copy the result to
some other place, etc. If the result was orders of magnitude off, they
wouldn't catch the error and wonder what was wrong, but just continue on to
the next step, oblivious.

So the situation described in the story is already here, in some respects.

------
rsaarelm
Reading old SF without a nostalgia factor is weird. There are all sorts of
things just off with the unspoken assumptions of the author, and the
extrapolations built on those make the whole story seem skewed. This one looks
like it was meant to work as a literal story as well as an allegorical one.
Now that it's too dated for that, the allegorical part gets bogged down in the
detailed explanations of arithmetic by hand and is a bit vague on exactly what
the people who don't bother are missing.

------
krallja
Hey, I just thought of this story a few weeks ago! Great read.
[http://scifiwarp.com/questions/21/searching-for-title-of-
sho...](http://scifiwarp.com/questions/21/searching-for-title-of-short-
story/23#23)

------
zandorg
(c) The Estate of Isaac Asimov...

[Edit] Seriously, I used to buy 2nd-hand short story books to get to stories
like this (which I've read), but if it has a wider readership this way, but
people buy novels, maybe that's copyright's intent?

~~~
pyre
Not sure what you're trying to say at the end, but copyright's intent was to
inspire Asimov to write stories in the first place. Copyright is supposed to
give artists/creators the peace of mind to know that once they _create_
someone won't just copy their work and turn a profit on their hard work. (i.e.
If Asimov wrote this story, just to have someone copy the book and start
selling it on street corners, making money on practically zero effort of their
own)

I don't see how protecting Asmiov's work _after_ his death is in any way
supposed to inspire him to create more works (he's already dead). And I
_highly_ doubt that Asimov cared whether or not his works would be under
copyright once he was dead and buried. The only real reason for works to be
protected past death is to the benefit of corporations _not_ to the benefit of
the general public or the artists/creators themselves.

~~~
neilk
There are reasons to oppose copyright but I don't think this is one of them.

Consider that "Last Lecture" professor, Randy Pausch. He spent some of his
last days working on a book. Should the surviving family be denied proceeds?
Should his author's advance have been much smaller?

That is; if you believe money is an important incentive for creators, you
can't overly penalize people who expect to die before all the returns are in.

You're still free to believe that all copyright is bad, or given too long a
term, of course.

~~~
pyre
That's an edge-case. On the flip-side, if I create something on the day that
I'm born, how long until it's out of copyright? Is that figure even a morally
right length of time to keep something copyrighted?

Let's not even delve into the 'reverse-copyright extensions' that happen when
they apply copyright extensions to works in the past that have already fallen
into the public domain... How is pulling something that was created 50+ years
ago (with the author dead and gone) back into copyright supposed to 'inspire
the arts' in any way, shape or form.

------
Ixiaus
I never read that short until now, thank you for posting it!

