The Feeling of Power (Asimov, 1958)

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Previous discussion 09.nov.2009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=931273 32 comments

It hits very differently in 2026 with people outsourcing their thinking to AI

There's some more discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/asimov/comments/1u76f8l/the_feeling...

Profession (also by Asimov) takes it even further - https://www.abelard.org/asimov.php

Oops, link got munged. Should be: https://archive.org/details/1958-02_IF/page/4/mode/2up

Epub version is 170mb — is there an easy way to compress or download in a format I can send to an e-reader?

found a light 18k ePub version here: https://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~friedan/physics_readings/As...

and a text version here: https://hex.ooo/library/power.html

Thank you!

Would like to know the thoughts of others around this book who are looking at this in 2026 vs 2009.

Reminds me of the Butlerian Jihad in Dune and how the anti-ai revolt led to the rise of human thinking machines. They're the ones that roll back their eyes in the movies when they're calculating.

In the Lynch version the mentat Thufir has a short rap where he is getting the house's defensive systems in order. Cool stuff.

"Sector six-eighty, copy the sixth the sum of the eighth quadrant of the ninth plus eight-four circles weave the eighth quarter the fourth, copy!"

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