Asimov & Amazon's Kindle

I see that Amazon is getting ready to launch its updated Kindle, and I have to say, I am intrigued. I believe our friend Dave Justus (I think) once commented here raving about his.

This morning, my Elder Son – with whom I am in an ongoing discussion about faith and science – left this short story of Asimov’s on my screen, because he thought it would amuse and entertain and also, I think, shore up his own argument on one level.

The Last Question
by Isaac Asimov 1956
The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face — miles and miles of face — of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.

Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough — so Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share In the glory that was Multivac’s.

For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth’s poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.

But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.

The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.

Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.

They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.

“It’s amazing when you think of it,” said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. “All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever.”

Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. “Not forever,” he said.
…
“I know all about entropy,” said Adell, standing on his dignity.

“The hell you do.”

“I know as much as you do.”

“Then you know everything’s got to run down someday.”

“All right. Who says they won’t?”

“You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed, forever. You said ‘forever.'”

“It was Adell’s turn to be contrary. “Maybe we can build things up again someday,” he said.

“Never.”

“Why not? Someday.”

“Never.”

“Ask Multivac.”

“You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can’t be done.”

Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?

Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?

Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.

Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

“No bet,” whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly.

By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten about the incident.

You’ll want to read it all.

It’s a great story, and you should read it, particularly if – like me – you spend a lot of time marveling at Hubble photos, big bang theories and the Book of Genesis.

But part of the joy of reading Asimov is in noting how much of what he had envisioned is already part of our world. Tiny portable computers; in 1956, that was compelling fantasy. A great deal of what, even thirty hears ago, seemed like healthy imaginations at play has lately come to pass. Paddy Chayefsky’s brilliant film Network seems like prophecy, today. George Orwell’s nightmarish 1984 appears to be on our doorstep (forget the projections of the last 8 years; Emmanuel Goldstein, Big Brother, the Two Minutes Hate and cranky aerobics instructors yelling at us by name on our televisions are all being created as we linger here, and you and I are Winston Smith, wondering if we’ll ever taste real chocolate again, or if that is only for the elites)…and Captain Picard’s whole- library -contained -in a- hand-held devise, well…say ‘hellooooo, Kindle’.

Of all of those things, I think only the Kindle is making me excited. I don’t think it will ever completely replace books – there is something too inviting about cracking open a new volume and taking a good sniff of new paper and ink before digging in; there is something comforting in bookmarks and falling asleep with a page on your face. But I can see the appeal of the Kindle, too. Students could download their huge, heavy textbooks, saving money and their spines. When going on retreat or vacation it would be wonderful to have all of my one’s material contained therein and I understand the thing reads well in sunlight. And my dear, patient husband would see much less book clutter about the place – although I love my book clutter…

This seems like the way book publishing is going. Sooner or later we’ll all own a Kindle or a cheaper knock-off, and books will become the familiars of snobs who sniff that they’ll never wholly give up the printed page – admittedly I might become one of them – and those too poor or too technophobic to go the digital route (that might be me, too). I do wonder, though, what the advent of ebooks will do to the woodpulp and recycling industries and the printing houses, and how it will affect numbers for transported goods, and delivery services.

Everything affects everything, of course. Asimov certainly knew that!

Well, I think the thing is going on my wish list – I don’t know that I’ll be able to resist the lure of downloaded books. But first I must save up for a new computer. This clunker is about to die, and I really want to get back to podcasting, too!

All I really want to know is, if we have Capt. Picards ebooks at the ready…where is the holodeck? Bring on the holodeck, that’s what I really want!

Amazon.com Widgets