come_to_think (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
come_to_think) wrote2012-11-07 02:07 pm
come_to_think) wrote2012-11-07 02:07 pm
Entry tags:
The cloudy crystal ball
From The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth (1952):
A team of designers went to work on an automatic [spacecraft] pilot. When it was done it worked pretty well. And weighed four and one half tons in spite of printed circuits and relays constructed under a microscope.
However, that book does contain, somewhere, the following timeless characterization:
The government --- odd how we talk about that clearinghouse for pressure groups as if it had a will of its own ---...
Speaking of government, it is a pleasure to observe that (as I expected) an attempt to base a majority coalition on desperate meanness has failed.
A team of designers went to work on an automatic [spacecraft] pilot. When it was done it worked pretty well. And weighed four and one half tons in spite of printed circuits and relays constructed under a microscope.
However, that book does contain, somewhere, the following timeless characterization:
The government --- odd how we talk about that clearinghouse for pressure groups as if it had a will of its own ---...
Speaking of government, it is a pleasure to observe that (as I expected) an attempt to base a majority coalition on desperate meanness has failed.