Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
There was a science fiction story (I think by Asimov but I'm not sure) where people had taken to using computers to do math for so long that writing math equations out had become a lost art. One of the characters rediscovers the 'art' and his superiors (in the government) conceive of all manner of things including having people contained within warheads who would guide the weapons to their targets.
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Dune by Frank Herbert is considered to a degree to be an inversion of sorts of some of Asimov's writings. There is a backstory which really isn't explained much where society had become over reliant on computers. As a result, there was the Butlerian Jihad where thinking machines were destroyed and a decree was made that
thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the a human mind. Different great schools were developed in part to help guide society which now has to stand without the use of thinking machines. Mentats are essentially human computers which can outperform anything the ancient prohibited computers could produce. Another school is the Spacing Guild which reminded me of the example you gave in Asimov's writings. The Guild have certain individuals called Navigators who have ingested so much spice they mutated in order to guide space ships safely through fold space.