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"I think we could solve our problems more easily through strength of character; but that's always been a commodity in extremely short supply."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| 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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and Technology from The Feeling of Power
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and Technology by Isaac Asimov
Tech news articles related to The Feeling of Power
Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov
Computers Improve Computers-related
news articles:
- Software Learns To Design Software
- AI Computer Chip Designs Passeth Human Understanding
| ElectionSim: China's 'Ender's Game' Battle Sim, Or Lem's 'Kingdom In A Box'? |
| Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer |
| Cortex 1 - Today A Warehouse, Tomorrow A Calculator Planet |
| Is Agentic AI The Wrong Kind Of Smartness? |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
