Matthew Knott - Blog

Gene Roddenberry is often credited as having amazing foresight, possibly showing the way with his innovations with personal communications, and matter transportation technology. But an often overlooked author with an equal gift for foresight is Frank Herbert.

His work on climate and environment and the novel Dune is widely regarded as among the finest in science fiction writing, but one of the lesser talked about events, at least until the novel of the same name was release, was the Butlerian Jihad. 

Briefly, the Butlerian Jihad is the culmination of mankind's reliance on thinking machines. The human mind had become largely redundant, mathematics in particular suffered as a result of not having to do mental arithmetic. The war that ensued wiped out these thinking machines and ushered in a new era of mental focus, and gave rise to the supreme thinkers, the Mentats.

This isn't a million miles from the way things are today, for years more and more people have been relying on calculators for simple calculations. Now people are starting to use spreadsheets and the like because working it out on a calculator is too hard. Comparisons have already been done based on the mathematical ability of current generation children and adults to their counterparts 50 years ago.

This demise is going to continue, it has to so long as nothing exists to challenge the trend. The question is how far will it go before the development of the human race is threatened? I think, as Herbert predicted, a point will come when a group says no more and embarks on a mission to change our mechanics of thought and learning.