Robert Heinlein once had a discussion with a professional astronomer in which the conversation turned to Heinlein’s attention to detail. Heinlein recounted how, when writing Space Cadet (1948), he and his wife used yards of butcher paper over three days to calculate a particular orbit; the results were described in the story with one line of text, but it was necessary to drive the drama. When the astronomer wondered why Heinlein did not use a computer to make the calculation, he replied, “My dear boy, this was 1947 [1].”

Of course, computers are commonplace today, and they have changed much of the way we go about our lives, saving time and money. Surprisingly, as much as Heinlein and other Golden Age science fiction authors were visionaries – Heinlein, for example, is credited with inventing the waterbed and teleoperated manipulators (waldoes), and with heavily influencing spacesuit design; none of them foresaw the coming of the digital computer and its influence on modern life.

So while computers are everywhere today, Heinlein did not have ready access to computers and neither did his characters. In Starman Jones (1953), faster-than-light travel is possible by entering hyperspace singularities on precise vectors. Computing course corrections to get the spaceship on the correct vector required astrogators to make rapid calculations making use of mathematical tables and a computer that amounted to little more than a 4-function calculator. Heinlein, a former naval officer, no doubt was drawing an analogy with mathematical tables classically used to navigate seaships (Interestingly, Charles Babbage was inspired to develop a mechanical computer in the 19th century while reviewing errata for a set of mathematical tables for celestial navigation [2]).

This trend of scarce computers continues through his early work. Even in the tale of an entrepreneurial engineer who created household automata and other labor-saving appliances, The Doorway Into Summer (1957), the devices were decidedly mechanical in nature. By the time Heinlein wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966), though, computers were present but not ubiquitous; rather, the model was a single, omnipresent computer that the typical citizen did not interact with.

Robert Heinlein was not the only Golden Age science fiction author who failed to foresee commonplace computing. Isaac Asimov’s robots certainly were ubiquitous general-purpose labor-saving tools, but they were not digital computers. Asimov was deliberately vague about the nature of the robots’ positronic brains, but one commonly-repeated description is revealing. In several stories, we are told the famous Three Laws of Robotics¹ are implemented as potentials, or voltages, and a human issuing a sufficiently strong order could create a high-enough Second Law potential to overcome the First Law potential, likely destroying the robot’s brain in the process. This description sounds very much like an analog system.

One reason these authors’ tales did not have computers everywhere was that when many of the stories were written, a practical transistor had not yet been developed or was still in its infancy, and integrated circuits were still years, decades even, away. Consider, for example, that Arthur Clarke’s proposal for geosynchronous communications satellites [3] included a crew for control and maintenance, specifically replacing vacuum tubes.

Fortunately, though, computers have become commonplace. The Golden Age science fiction authors may not have foreseen a computer on every desk and in every appliance, but other visionaries did. For us, the readers of CrossTalk, this has benefited us by offering the opportunity to work in a field we truly enjoy. To be sure, without computers, we would still be employed in some other, related field such as electrical engineering, mathematics, or stage illusion.

The defense industry has benefited enormously from the advances in automation that Heinlein and his contemporaries overlooked. Computers make it possible for aircraft and spacecraft to do things otherwise impossible, and they permit ages-old tasks to be performed better, at a great savings. For example, the U.S. Navy has learned that automation on its ships provide a significant personnel cost savings with a reduced crew and an even greater fuel cost savings when a divide-by-zero error shuts down the propulsion system [4].

The arrival of commodity computers, however, has helped more than software professionals and the defense industry: It improved our economy as a whole. The software industry is a $250 billion industry [5]. This includes sub-industries that evolved from existing markets, such as business software, avionics, and communications; it also includes sub-industries that would not exist without ubiquitous computers, such as the spam-filtering, anti-virus, and anti-spyware industries. By creating entirely new market niches, computers have truly improved white-collar employment opportunities around the world.

Once employed, we find that computers have improved the way we do business. Consider, for example, how much the ability to spill czech has imp roofed the litter ace sea inn hour workplaces. Perhaps the greatest benefit comes from one particular aspect of workplace computing: email. E-mail has measurably improved our productivity. Personally, e-mail allows me to perform 25-50 minutes’ worth of extra work each day – I know this because if I am away from work for a week, then on my first day back I need two to four hours to catch up on all the missed productivity waiting in my inbox.

Away from work, we still find that we are better off, thanks to computers. Now we can purchase gasoline without consulting an attendant; we can conduct bank transactions from any street corner; we can renew our license plates without visiting the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Eliminating the personal touch is better for the businesses in question, since automatic transactions are cheaper than human-guided transactions. And they are better for us, the consumers – why else would we be charged extra for the convenience?

Even when we use the telephone, we are still benefiting from advances in computing, and I am not only referring to cell phones whose size is now constrained by the human finger. The telephone on my desk is connected to a computerized switching system, and it has computerized voicemail instead of a cassette-tape answering machine. If I turn Luddite and use the phone to talk to someone at the DMV, a menu system will connect me to the wrong person after a half-dozen keypresses – much faster than spending 30 minutes in the wrong line, were I to trek to the DMV. Or if I wanted to check my credit card balance by telephone instead of by computer, I will still end up with a computer telling me the information after simply pressing one, star, five, four… no, I do not want to book a vacation. Hmmm… the menu must have changed. Well, I can still connect to an operator by pressing zero… No, apparently I cannot.

Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and others of their age wrote of worlds without computers helping us every minute of the day: worlds in which people still had to be able to spell for written communication, to use manners to interact with people for even the simplest of our daily tasks, and to apply common sense when performing duties that affect lives and equipment. In all these little ways, the computer that science fiction authors overlooked or underestimated has influenced our lives, and truly it has made or lives better.

1. Heinlein, Robert A. Expanded Universe. New York: Ace Science Fiction Books, 1980.
2. Swade, Doron. The Difference Engine. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.
3. Clarke, Arthur C. “Extra-Terrestrial Relays.” Wireless World 51 (October 1945): 305-308.
4. Slabodkin, Gregory. “Software Glitches Leave Navy Smart Ship Dead in the Water.” Government Computer News. July 13, 1998 <www.gcn.com/print/17_17/33727-1.html>.
5. Mills, Steve. “A Beneficial Ecosystem.” Upgrade. Dec.2005 / Jan. 2006: 30-32.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

1. Asimov first introduced the Three Laws in Runaround (1942). They are:



1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, except where such protection conflicts with the First or Second Law.

Maj. Christopher Bohn, Ph.D., is a software engineering course director at the Air Force Institute of Technology’s (AFIT) School of Systems and Logistics where he teaches a series of distance-learning short courses. Over the past 13 years, Bohn has served in various Air Force operational and research assignments, including time as an engineer for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Collaborative Enterprise Environment. He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-certified software development professional. Bohn has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University, a master’s degree in computer engineering from AFIT, and a doctorate from Ohio State University.

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