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"Science fiction represents the modern heresy and the cutting edge of speculative imagination as it grapples with Mysterious Time---linear or non-linear time."
- Frank Herbert
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| Computers Improve Computers | ||
| The idea that it will be possible for computers to design more advanced computers. |
The story is set in a future in which human beings have had computers for so long that they have forgotten how to do simple arithmetic.
| The President considered that. He said, "... in practice, how can anyone know how a computer works?"
Brant laughed genially. "Well, Mr. President, I asked the same question. It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings. Those were simple computers, of course, this being before the time of the rational use of computers to design more advanced computers had been established. |
| Technovelgy from The Feeling of Power,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Worlds of Science Fiction in 1958 Additional resources -
|
This is an early reference to this idea in science fiction. It's even more intriguing when you consider that this is the basis for the idea of a technological Singularity, which suggests that if computers were allowed to design better computers, then we would eventually have computers that transcended human intelligence completely.
Compare to the Games Machine from van Vogt's 1945 novel The world of Null-A and the Vulcan 3 computer from Philip K. Dick's 1960 novel Vulcan's Hammer.
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Tech news articles related to The Feeling of Power
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Computers Improve Computers-related
news articles:
- Software Learns To Design Software
- AI Computer Chip Designs Passeth Human Understanding
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| Automatic Bot Traffic Is 38 Percent Of HTTP Requests |
| Neuroplatform Human Brain Organoid Bioprocessor Uses Less Electricity |
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'
'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
