Profession by Isaac Asimov (1957)
abelard.org
abelard.org
This came from WWII, especially the European theater. Heroic mode had failed at Dunkirk and Dieppe. For the next round, D-Day, things were more organized. Way more organized. General Eisenhower came from logistics. He delayed D-Day a year while the Allies got ready. Really ready. Overwhelmingly ready. Huge numbers of special landing ships. Mobile instant ports. Giant spools of pipe to get fuel across the Atlantic. Special tanks that could grind up minefields. Prefabricated Coca-Cola bottling plants. When the invasion came, the backup was there behind it to put a huge army into Europe, fight through an entrenched army, and grind on to Berlin.
That kind of thinking dominated the 1950s and 1960s, with the Apollo program being the last gasp of that approach.
There were major pipelines built both on the American mainland (the Big Inch and Little Big Inch pipelines), due to an overwhelming toll of German Kriegsmarine U-Boat attacks on US domestic oil shipments (New Orleans to New Jersey, largely, Project Paukenschlag).
And there was Operation Pluto which ran a 9" pipeline across the English Channel, delivering fuel from Britain to the European mainland.
Trans-Atlantic oil shipments however were by tanker to the best of my knowledge.
I'm relying strongly on Daniel Yergin's account of the oil industry during WWII (along with WWI, an absolutely fascinating episode), covered in his 1990 book The Prize. Despite differing strongly with Yergin over the future of oil and the oil industry, I unreservedly recommend this book as a masterful history of its past.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Inch>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pluto>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize:_The_Epic_Quest_for_...>
Also, correcting my previous comment, Pluto was 2" and 3" pipes, not 9".
That is, the vast majority of oil used in Allied operations in Europe passed through a set of 2- and 3-inch pipes, with 17 laid in total per the Wikipedia article I'd linked earlier.
Which speaks both to the flow-rates achieved (~400,000 Imperial gallons/day), and the energy content of petroleum.
Sun Tsu, an army marches on it stomach!
[1] http://www.nww2m.com/2011/08/coca-cola-the-pause-that-refres...
The Americans are here, they're not just liberating, they come equipped.
And people get to drink Coke now.
The City and the City is set up as a straightforward crime novel: in the dilapidated city of Beszél in eastern Europe, Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad is trying to solve what initially looks like a routine case. But as he looks deeper into the murder of a mysterious woman, he discovers that she has links to Ul Qoma, a city that exists in the same physical space as Beszél but whose inhabitants studiously ignore any sign of overlap.I kinda feel like that's how cities are today and will increasingly be so as we get further into the future where people are interacting digitally first and physically second interaction starts to stratify.
I imagine a holo-lens future where it's quite literally possible to have a city to yourself or only see the set of people you want to with all the good and bad. Imagine social media bubbles but in the real world, with all the good bad bad that comes.
For most of the first eighteen years of his life, George Platen had headed firmly in one direction, that of Registered Computer Programmer. There were those in his crowd who spoke wisely of Spationautics, Refrigeration Technology, Transportation Control, and even Administration. But George held firm.
Why did Asimov in 1957 write as if Refrigeration technology would be so prominent in the future? Most people nowadays find the fridge to be a fairly boring technology.
So I googled it.
Apparently the fridge was only used by around 8 percent of American households in the early 1930’s. It didn’t become a standard part of American household life until the end of the 1940’s.
So by the time this story was published the fridge was only commonly part of your life for the past 7 years probably.
Curious.
Kinda like so much of science fiction nowadays fixates on phones. Or has smartphone analogues taking up a bunch of detail. Science fiction stories tend to be written so that recent tech advances continue to be mind blowing and awe inspiring centuries in the future.
Meanwhile only a few decades after this story was published the fridge became a standard boring part of life.
the entire fresh food supply chain, including military logistics, is structured around refrigeration, and human diets have changed dramatically as a result. before refrigeration, if you wanted to eat pumpkin in the spring or peas in the fall, your options were canned pumpkin or pickled pumpkin. when refrigerated shipping became available (about 60 years before asimov's story, not 7), within about fifteen years, argentina went from being a poor rural country fighting off raids, and shipping small amounts of unpalatable salt beef overseas, to being one of the world's richest countries from selling fresh beef; nowadays, of course, it's unthinkable to ship meat from the slaughterhouse to the butcher shop without refrigeration
refrigeration is also fundamental to the current medical system; many vaccines won't keep without refrigeration, and of course tissue samples and organ transplants rely heavily on refrigeration to preserve them
the entire technological and scientific world is built on precise metrology, and aside from the josephson junctions i mentioned before, air conditioning is important to precise metrology; virtually every phenomenon used to maintain a metrological standard over time varies with temperature, so metrological labs are invariably maintained at a precisely controlled temperature, usually to within half a degree and sometimes to within a hundredth of a degree. moreover, that temperature is usually 20°, because for historical reasons that's the temperature most of those standards are designed for; but you can't maintain a 20° temperature year-round without air conditioning in most of the human-inhabited world
refrigeration technology in the form of air conditioning consumes a quite significant share of human world marketed energy consumption, so improvements in its efficiency are economically very important and currently avidly pursued by many avenues. and, as the cnn article above mentions, refrigerant leaks from vapor-compression refrigerative air conditioners are a significant contributor to global warming, though far from the majority
there are numerous sbir grants available in the usa for improvements in various kinds of refrigeration technology, including things like cryostats and dilution coolers
so every facet of your life is profoundly shaped by refrigeration technology, even if you aren't aware of it
I guess refrigeration is much more interesting than I assumed! I definitely need to read up more about all this.
Even today these type are not as widely deployed as they could be, and I would expect Asimov was quite aware of their existence and unmet potential (that still lingers).
As a futurist and believer in continuous improvement, you wouldn't want progress in any unperfected technology to ever stop.
How else was science fiction going to become reality eventually in the future?
i am not entirely clear on the advantages of the einstein-szilard design over the earlier munters–von platen design, which as i understand it is the one commonly used today, and would be grateful for an explanation
the story here is not one of stagnation
What's fun for HN is that his target profession is actually Computer Programmer. Interesting correlation to his eventual fate.
I wrote a short post about this story w.r.t. job displacement of SWEs a couple of years ago: https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2022/asimov-programming-and-th...
It comes out in all kinds of ways. In mundane tasks like cooking, or music, or art. Or, in a few cases, programming.
Over a long career I've come to agree with Asimovs premise. You cannot simply tell someone to create. They either have it or they don't. Equally you cannot tell a creator not to create. They will, whether you like it or not.
And yes, it's a very rare attribute. Most people can be trained to do a task really well. Very few can create.
Lucky indeed is the creator who gets paid to create. Having a job with the freedom to create is the ultimate success.
I'm not convinced. I think that several things hold most people back from creation:
- the risks that must be taken
- the continual destruction that accompanies creation feels like a waste to many of us
- other commitments
I'm convinced that we are allowing vast amounts of creative ability to be stifled not merely by stultifying educational systems but simply by lack of opportunity.
I hadn't read this story before, but it helped bring into relief the frustration that has always haunted me, this sense that, no, the world actually must be different than people believe it is and can be. There must be something that actually can be done, that it doesn't have to be this way and actually ought not.
I've spent my whole life looking for that flash of recognition in someone else's eyes that they know it too, but have searched tens of thousands of faces in vain.
That's somewhat orthogonal to creation. Although it is something some creators see, and set out to change it.
But the group who can see a different, say, social structure, are distinct from creators. Creators create, not to change things, but because that's how they are. Changers can see a different path, and are frustrated that change is hard.
Both are small minorities, with some overlap, but are distinct groups.
Incidentally there are lots of population groups around the world, in every country. The Amish, which gave rise to this thread, are an example of that.
The people I'm looking for are the ones who have actually had to grapple with why there is anything, rather than nothing at all. Nothing before them is taken for granted as necessarily so.
Those are creators, and most people never ask the questions.
But equally you misunderstand the precept. Creation is not about perfection, or skill, or success. Creation is an act.
Most kids learn to cook by following a recipie. But one kid in the class just wants to mix things together to see what happens.
Pretty much every kid draws on paper as a child. But some tiny fraction of them never stop. Yes, some of them get good at it, some lucky ones make a living at it. That's the urge.
Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&t=794s
(edit: apparently it's the most watched TED Talk of all time)
Many humans never get in a situation where there is an interesting enough problem for them to create a solution or where a need or benefit is seen for them to create to fill that need or derive that benefit.
For the humans that do most of them only do so once or incredibly maybe even twice, think people who essentially make one thing - like Italo Marchiony who created the ice cream cone and I don't think much else other than a business to exploit his creation.
The people who are thought of as creators are able to create quickly and a lot and often seemingly at will. This is essentially their primary skill and what sets them apart from others. Because of this skill they may even use it as the proverbial hammer looking for nails.
I've written some on my views on creativity - https://medium.com/p/1484652bcc97 - generally in relation to writing and criticism probably the most relevant article is this one "A Theory As To Why Art Is Created" https://medium.com/p/b0a2538416e3
And yet new things sell really well. Which suggests that the need is there. By contrast creators look around and see need in everything.
>> The people who are thought of as creators are able to create quickly and a lot and often seemingly at will. This is essentially their primary skill and what sets them apart from others.
Exactly. Now don't get me wrong, 99% of their creations are rubbish. 99% of their ideas are quickly discarded. Some would require more resources than they have available. But they are forever experimenting, learning, understanding. They can't help it.
And if you went to his farm, I suspect you'll find other novelties.
Then again farmers are well known (in some places perhaps) for their creativity in making do either limited resources.
for a much darker take on this, check out orson scott card's "unaccompanied sonata"
Or they simply got "stuck" in something, never to get out and find some passion. What even is creating, some people (unlike many programmers or scientists) create social groups, organisations, humor.
I think your idea that there are special "creators" and "regular people" is way off and honestly just a way to feel special and unique. I know people that finally found passion after they retired.. but they were too bogged down to ever figure it out earlier in life.
[+] joint favourite with "the martian way", an extremely underrated story that to me exemplifies the golden age optimism around solar system exploration in a way that not even clarke manages.
I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed. We do not find signposts at crossroads, but our own scouts erect them, to help the rest.
- Max Born, as mentioned in Experiment and Theory in Physics (1943)
Useful skills might stop being useful quick, general knowledge/intelligence goes further.
If you need to support yourself based on what you learn in a university, you don't want a liberal arts degree from a mid-rate university. You want some degree with a heavy practicum component. Or maybe you want a trade school.
If you have the chops to make it as an independent thinker, get your liberal arts degree somewhere that actually churns out high-level thinkers. If you can't get in, reconsider whether you have the chops at all.
If you're not dependent on income, though, study whatever you want. It's one of the reasons I'd love to see retirees studying things like philosophy, because they're not trying to instrumentalize it for a career, and they have enough life experience not to be hopelessly naïve about it.
For me issue is that people want to be taught like in the story of Asimov they want some magic upload to the brain and no effort.
Where in reality university can only go so far with making knowledge available and fun… Because hard things will be hard regardless.
I've thought about it a lot over the years, and especially came back to it last year with the rise of ChatGPT.
I guess you could arguably say Plato’s Republic touches on this, but its not the same. Makes me think there must be earlier examples of this though.
And finally, did it occur to you that "just leave and find a better company" is not possible for everyone? Not to mention that most companies are mediocre-to-bad so the "better" companies are a small and very finite pool.
Comments like yours paint a wrong picture and are not helpful or productive.
You seem to have taken the OP's comment very personally, and I'm sorry if you're stuck in a job that forces you to compromise your practice even when you know better. But there's also a (admittedly familiar) problem of a prolonged growth boom flooding the industry with bad engineers that produce fragile work and have poor foundational knowledge.
But, I don't give up. I pitch my bosses research trails all of the time. 90% they don't hit the mark, mostly because I don't try to conform to the whatever roadmap the product team has laid out. But once in a while my ambition and their plan converge, and this is when I get to play out the really cool stuff I do at my job.
You can't have people on a team of 10 all going in their own direction on their own schedule. It's too unpredictable and there are deadlines and contracts to fulfill. And for most commercial software, I don't need the team to research how to do it. We know exactly how to do it. We need the team to execute the plan.
It absolutely sucks, but that's the reality of most coding jobs. At least in my experience.
This is my first encounter with abelard.org. While it is delightful in a kind of early internet culture way, I sincerely doubt Random House, Inc. gave permission to reproduce this in full to this pseudonymous author who writes in the persona of a space alien who is the reincarnation of an 11th century philosopher monk and, well, I'll just share their words: [1]
> abelard is thought to live in a ger on the steppes of outer mongolia, surrounded by an indeterminate number of yaks, husbands and wives... and vast hordes of children preparing for the cultural conquest of the world... abelard is known to have long conversations with the good fairy. it is rumoured that abelard arrived on a cultural troubleshooting mission to this planet from a star system approximately 40 light years away: this prior to the earth being offered probationary membership of The Galactic Anarchy (some call it The Culture).
> as abelard is from an advanced culture, this entity has to communicate in rather simple language in order to be understood by the savages... consequently there are various rumours... one is that The Culture have forgotten all about this attaché, who often gets homesick and pissed off with living in such a primitive backwater. another is that this entity is a reincarnation of another Abelard born in 1079.... both of these rumours are true to a related degree.
304. Duration of copyright: Subsisting copyrights
(a) Copyrights in Their First Term on January 1, 1978.—
(1)(A) Any copyright, in the first term of which is subsisting on January 1, 1978, shall endure for 28 years from the date it was originally secured.
Profession was published in 1957. The copyright protection will expire in 2052.
In 2000, abelard.org negotiated with Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. and purchased the rights to publish the novella Profession by Isaac Asimov as part of the website, abelard.org.
Published in the US, 1929 through 1963, Published with notice and the copyright was renewed, 95 years after publication date.