Re: anachronisms?

mcv <mcvmcv@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:

>While reading Asimov's _Second Foundation_, the book proudly described
>a really clever system that made it really easy for relatively untrained
>people to figure out exactly where in the galaxy they are. Before the
>invention of that item, figuring out your location took days or weeks,
>but all I was thinking was: if this process is this simple, why the
>hell isn't it automated in the first place?

	Granting my last read of the Foundation Series was years ago ... 
I don't remember the introduction of this system in Second Foundation.  
Where was it?  

	I remember in Foundation's Edge the introduction of the new system 
that better computes one's hyperspace jumps, and that the results were so 
close to the desired target that Golan Trevise did the location-finding 
entirely by hand because he didn't trust the computer, but that's a
special 
case and something probably anyone with a too-perfect new system will feel

the urge to do.  

	And then there was one Asimov short-short where the protagonists, 
making their escape from a bank heist or something, have the ****p do a 
completely random jump and have the thing hardwired so out of the jump 
the ****p will do a completely automated determination of their position 
before returning control.  There is a punch line, but also a little nag 
about how much to leave the computer to do.  

-- 
								Joseph Nebus
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