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Here's another one: Computer. Back before programmable general-purposes computing machinery existed, computer was a human job description -- a human being who
by cstross 10y ago
Here's another one: Computer.
Back before programmable general-purposes computing machinery existed, computer was a human job description -- a human being who was employed to perform basic calculation tasks rapidly and accurately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer
- yolesaber 10y agoThat job still exists, except in the very far future, and is known as a "mentat"
- dave_sullivan 10y agoThat's kind of the joke though right? In 1965, when Dune was written, computer was still a human job title and mentats seemed like a totally reasonable far future extrapolation. Notice in Dune, no AIs, but they did have "family nukes". Really, Dune's vision of the future was about human augmentation through drugs (spice) as opposed to digital automation.
- icebraining 10y agoAIs do exist in the Dune world, they were simply forbidden after the Butlerian Jihad. The author didn't extrapolate, he made a deliberate decision to exclude such devices.
- dave_sullivan 10y agoHa, you're right. I forgot about that, but I even read the first book in the series about the butlerian jihad that Frank Herbert's son wrote. I should finish that series... So the thesis was "machines will enslave us but drugs and religion will set us free"? Because, of course, all fiction should reduce to a single sentence thesis, otherwise all those words would be a waste...