Asimov on electronics

It refers to a massively parallel quantum computer consisting of qubits encoded in a positronium hydride lattice, embedded in a supercooled yttrium iron garnet Bose-Einstein condensate substrate.

Jeez! Don't they teach the kids anything these days

Don't forget the Annihilation Radiation.

...

Asimov was a smart guy.

I doubt if he had clue about minority carrier devices when he invented the positronic brain - back then nobody much did. My guess is that he was just riffing on the relatively recently discovered positron.

That was actually discovered in 1932, though Dirac had hypothesised that it had to exist a year earlier.

You wouldn't wanted to put one in your computer - it's the electron's anti-particle and they annihilate one another when they meet.

He also discovered the time travel chemical, resublimated thiotimoline.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Yes, it can be titrated with Olpalomine using an indicator such as e-nuphizin-nuph or Thatizol.

Bill would know more, he's a Chemist.

With the AI fad, people are considering the implications of falling in love with a humanoid robot.

I don't recall if Asimov considered that. I haven't read the I Robot books in a long time.

He did have the three laws, which might make an interesting story of conflict caused by human emotions: What does the robot do when a human falls in love with it (him/her/whatever)?

Ed

Lester del Rey’s 1938 story “Helen O’Loy” is the classic on that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Hari Seldon and Dors, in the Foundation series.

And first read the story when I got hold of a copy of the 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction in which it was published.

It's a great parody of a scientific paper, but I trained as a physical chemist and Isaac Asimov got his Ph.D. in bioichemistry, so I may have missed some of the subtler bits. It's a whole lot better justification of the proposition that Asimov was a smart guy than the "positronic brain" line.

There was an earlier one, that did not go that well. The Robots of Dawn, R. Jander Panell and Gladia Delmarre.

I have a collection of Asimov's robot stories titled "The Complete Robot" plus other volumes of his work. Haven't read them in a long time so I'm hazy about specifics. I do remember that there are instances where a human had romantic feelings towards a robot.

The evolutionary mechanism - screw up the genome and see if that instance of the screwed-up genome can survive - means that occasional human being are going to fall in love with all sorts pf inappropriate objects. We can hope that robots are going to be more carefully designed.

Of course, by the time we are able to design a tolerably human robot, we will probably also be able edit out the defects in the genome that lead some human being to fall in love with inappropriate objects.

Ian M Banks, in his "Culture" novels, did imagine some fairly deep relationships between some human beings and some of his massive artificial intelligences whom he'd endowed with human depth and complexity. It is still pretty silly, but not as mawkish as some of the older stories.