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The Little Black Bag by C.M. Kornbluth:
Science Fiction Inventions, Technology and Ideas

"The normal progress of a technology produces simpler and simpler gadgets involving more and more complex fundamental laws. And, of course, requiring less and less of the user..."

('The Little Black Bag' by CM Kornbluth)

“After twenty generations of shillyshallying and “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”, genus homo had bred himself into an impasse. Dogged biometricians had pointed out with irrefutable logic that mental subnormals were outbreeding mental normals and supernormals, and that the process was occurring on an exponential curve. Every fact that could be mustered in the argument proved the biometricians’ case, and led inevitably to the conclusion that genus homo was going to wind up in a preposterous jam quite soon. If you think that had any effect on breeding practices, you do not know genus homo.

“There was, of course, a sort of masking effect produced by that other exponential function, the accumulation of technological devices…

“The supernormals “improved the product” at greater speed than the subnormals degraded it, but in smaller quantity because elaborate training of their children was practiced on a custom-made basis. The fetish of higher education had some weird avatars by the twentieth generation ; “colleges” where not a member of the student body could read words of three syllables; “universities” where such degrees as “Bachelor of Typewriting,” “Master of Shorthand” and “Doctor of Philosophy (Card Filing)” were conferred, with the traditional pomp. The handful of supernormals used such devices in order that the vast majority might keep some semblance of a social order going.”

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