The Feeling of Power

Common card · No. 441130

"The Feeling of Power" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the February 1958 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction, and was reprinted in the 1959 collection Nine Tomorrows, the 1969 retrospective Opus 100, the 1970 anthology The Stars Around Us, the 1986 collection Robot Dreams, the 1990 anthology "The Complete Stories (Asimov)" volume 1. In the introduction to Robot Visions, Asimov lists this story as one of the notable robot stories. The story is representative of the genre of sci-fi that started in the 1950s as a reaction to computers, around the theme of caution against human mental atrophy in the computer era. Arthur C. Clarke's 1960 story "Into the Comet" is in a similar vein. The story has since been cited as an early exploration of technological deskilling and human dependence on automation, themes that later became associated with calculators, GPS navigation, and artificial intelligence.

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