31 ms·

“Profession” (1957)

111 points by nbaksalyar 11y ago

bra-ket 11y ago
super, I read it in Russian when I was a kid
viach 11y ago
Sounds stupid, but that's one of the reasons I'm working in software dev. Thanks, Isaac.
bootload 11y ago
"There are ten thousand men like you, George, who support the advancing technology of fifteen hundred worlds. We can’t allow ourselves to miss one recruit to that number or waste our efforts on one member who doesn’t measure up." From Nine Tomorrows, as a final year student I remember reading this line from the short story prior to exams and relaxing for just a moment. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Tomorrows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Tomorrows
neelborooah 11y ago
Such a wonderful story! There is so much emphasis on brilliant execution in software (and startups), but creativity is not celebrated enough. As with this story, it's not necessarily bad or good, but it is this way. "You made this? That's cool bro, but how can we create a business out of it?"
douche 11y ago
One of the things I love about Asimov, is that no matter how much of his stuff I read, there's always something new out there.
- acheron 11y ago
  Indeed. I was initially surprised I hadn't read this one before, but then when you remember how much he wrote there's no way I've read even a tenth of his stories. So I really shouldn't be surprised at all.
  - shalmanese 11y ago
    Profession and The Feeling of Power [1] always seemed like sister texts to me. They were written around the same time and explore very similar themes. [1] http://downlode.org/Etext/power.html http://downlode.org/Etext/power.html
jeorgun 11y ago
I've always loved this story. Reading it now, though, it's funny that it was written by the guy most famous for his robot stories. They seem like a pretty glaring omission. If you could program the job skills and knowledge onto a human brain, why not a positronic one? All the non-creative jobs would just end up being automated. Which is basically the situation we're heading towards now in any case. Pretty prescient, I suppose.
- michaelochurch 11y ago
  If you could program the job skills and knowledge onto a human brain, why not a positronic one? All the non-creative jobs would just end up being automated. I find it possible that they are, and that the work done by the non-elite is largely unused in practical applications, but they're still encouraged to do it for two reasons: (1) it gives them something to do, and (2) the competitions (Olympics) give a model for elite human performance that the upper-class technicians and academics then automate. While it's not strictly answered as to why these competitions are called "Olympics", the general sense of sport is an activity from a previous time. We don't need archers to defend castles or hunt boars, or runners to carry messages at 8 miles per hour when we have cell phones, but there's something innate about the sports that makes us enjoy partaking and (for some) competing and spectating. The activity of the other 99.999% isn't needed on the front lines, but it's important for keeping human skills and knowledge sharp and so the 0.001% (assuming that the reveal at the end is a reliable source, and it may or may not be) who can be original thinkers have some basis for what to improve and what behaviors the machines need to replicate.
- darkmighty 11y ago
  Well, it might be cheaper to use a biological brain than to use a computer for many tasks, even a few centuries into the future. We're incredibly good at high level abstraction and problem solving. We're pretty flexible: you can "program" us with a few verbal instructions to do an enormous range of tasks and we fill in the gaps in the instructions. All that for the low price of US$10,000! (average cost of financing a human to adult age?) I of course agree that human soldering is will hardly remain crucial to manufacturing. That is, provided we actually needed to compete with robots at all (will depend on the demographic and resource situation of the future). It's likely most humans will stick to the most pleasurable tasks and only a few strategic activities will keep being rewarded for their raw productive value. In other words, demography and resources equal, we're not really competing with move advanced tools: they should be just free our time and improving quality of life, provided we have some adequate scheme for distribution of resources. That for me is one of the most interesting aspects to be explored by incoming changes: how will we manage our economy (among humans), and how will we manage our relation with machines as they gradually become more proficient at higher and higher level tasks? Will our definition of 'human' change in the process?
late2part 11y ago
Perhaps the story explains why so many people succeed greatly that don't finish college?
dieg0 11y ago
thank you!
peter_l_downs 11y ago
I read this maybe last year, but had totally forgotten that it was written by Asimov. Great writing, thanks for posting this here.
SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
Ah, spot the anachronism - the 1950s view of the future 100s of years from now: > "Now what’s a Programmer going to be doing? Sitting all day long, feeding some fool mile-long machine.”
- IvyMike 11y ago
  What's the combined length of Google's data centers?
  - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
    That thought had crossed my mind. An individual data center? I don't know, probably a lot less than a mile. Apparently they vary: https://huanliu.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/amazon-data-center-size/ https://huanliu.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/amazon-data-center-... The whole lot put together, certainly larger than a mile. Minimum size, in a few hundred years time? Definitely not larger than a mile.
nzealand 11y ago
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed reading asimov's short stories.
siscia 11y ago
Amazing stories... I found myself "struggling" in college (3.5 GPA in American, 26/30 in Italian) and I am surrounded by successful kids that have no answer to the question: "What you want to do ?" nor I see any effort on them to learn anything other than what its feed in our young brain... I am going back to class to regain my humbleness...
keeganpoppen 11y ago
great read. does this story reminds anyone else of The Giver (the highlight of 5th grade's conscripted reading)?
- CosmicShadow 11y ago
  That was what I was thinking too!
demircancelebi 11y ago
This was a great story, thank you for posting it

“Profession” (1957)

111 points by nbaksalyar 11y ago

bra-ket 11y ago

super, I read it in Russian when I was a kid

viach 11y ago

Sounds stupid, but that's one of the reasons I'm working in software dev. Thanks, Isaac.

bootload 11y ago

"There are ten thousand men like you, George, who support the advancing technology of fifteen hundred worlds. We can’t allow ourselves to miss one recruit to that number or waste our efforts on one member who doesn’t measure up." From Nine Tomorrows, as a final year student I remember reading this line from the short story prior to exams and relaxing for just a moment. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Tomorrows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Tomorrows

neelborooah 11y ago

Such a wonderful story! There is so much emphasis on brilliant execution in software (and startups), but creativity is not celebrated enough. As with this story, it's not necessarily bad or good, but it is this way. "You made this? That's cool bro, but how can we create a business out of it?"

douche 11y ago

One of the things I love about Asimov, is that no matter how much of his stuff I read, there's always something new out there.

acheron 11y ago
Indeed. I was initially surprised I hadn't read this one before, but then when you remember how much he wrote there's no way I've read even a tenth of his stories. So I really shouldn't be surprised at all.
- shalmanese 11y ago
  Profession and The Feeling of Power [1] always seemed like sister texts to me. They were written around the same time and explore very similar themes. [1] http://downlode.org/Etext/power.html http://downlode.org/Etext/power.html

jeorgun 11y ago

I've always loved this story. Reading it now, though, it's funny that it was written by the guy most famous for his robot stories. They seem like a pretty glaring omission. If you could program the job skills and knowledge onto a human brain, why not a positronic one? All the non-creative jobs would just end up being automated. Which is basically the situation we're heading towards now in any case. Pretty prescient, I suppose.

michaelochurch 11y ago
If you could program the job skills and knowledge onto a human brain, why not a positronic one? All the non-creative jobs would just end up being automated. I find it possible that they are, and that the work done by the non-elite is largely unused in practical applications, but they're still encouraged to do it for two reasons: (1) it gives them something to do, and (2) the competitions (Olympics) give a model for elite human performance that the upper-class technicians and academics then automate. While it's not strictly answered as to why these competitions are called "Olympics", the general sense of sport is an activity from a previous time. We don't need archers to defend castles or hunt boars, or runners to carry messages at 8 miles per hour when we have cell phones, but there's something innate about the sports that makes us enjoy partaking and (for some) competing and spectating. The activity of the other 99.999% isn't needed on the front lines, but it's important for keeping human skills and knowledge sharp and so the 0.001% (assuming that the reveal at the end is a reliable source, and it may or may not be) who can be original thinkers have some basis for what to improve and what behaviors the machines need to replicate.
darkmighty 11y ago
Well, it might be cheaper to use a biological brain than to use a computer for many tasks, even a few centuries into the future. We're incredibly good at high level abstraction and problem solving. We're pretty flexible: you can "program" us with a few verbal instructions to do an enormous range of tasks and we fill in the gaps in the instructions. All that for the low price of US$10,000! (average cost of financing a human to adult age?) I of course agree that human soldering is will hardly remain crucial to manufacturing. That is, provided we actually needed to compete with robots at all (will depend on the demographic and resource situation of the future). It's likely most humans will stick to the most pleasurable tasks and only a few strategic activities will keep being rewarded for their raw productive value. In other words, demography and resources equal, we're not really competing with move advanced tools: they should be just free our time and improving quality of life, provided we have some adequate scheme for distribution of resources. That for me is one of the most interesting aspects to be explored by incoming changes: how will we manage our economy (among humans), and how will we manage our relation with machines as they gradually become more proficient at higher and higher level tasks? Will our definition of 'human' change in the process?

late2part 11y ago

Perhaps the story explains why so many people succeed greatly that don't finish college?

dieg0 11y ago

thank you!

peter_l_downs 11y ago

I read this maybe last year, but had totally forgotten that it was written by Asimov. Great writing, thanks for posting this here.

SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago

Ah, spot the anachronism - the 1950s view of the future 100s of years from now: > "Now what’s a Programmer going to be doing? Sitting all day long, feeding some fool mile-long machine.”

IvyMike 11y ago
What's the combined length of Google's data centers?
- SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
  That thought had crossed my mind. An individual data center? I don't know, probably a lot less than a mile. Apparently they vary: https://huanliu.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/amazon-data-center-size/ https://huanliu.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/amazon-data-center-... The whole lot put together, certainly larger than a mile. Minimum size, in a few hundred years time? Definitely not larger than a mile.

nzealand 11y ago

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed reading asimov's short stories.

siscia 11y ago

Amazing stories... I found myself "struggling" in college (3.5 GPA in American, 26/30 in Italian) and I am surrounded by successful kids that have no answer to the question: "What you want to do ?" nor I see any effort on them to learn anything other than what its feed in our young brain... I am going back to class to regain my humbleness...

keeganpoppen 11y ago

great read. does this story reminds anyone else of The Giver (the highlight of 5th grade's conscripted reading)?

CosmicShadow 11y ago
That was what I was thinking too!

demircancelebi 11y ago

This was a great story, thank you for posting it