In each time period, humanity has dealings with a supercomputer called Multivac. The Last Question takes place in seven time periods, each one set further in our future. The one thing that might have turned him, and made him surrender his quest… The Devil (Mara) tempted the Buddha with a plenitude of material – though temporal – distractions.īut there was one thing that Mara never dangled in front of the Buddha… The result: The Last Question, published in 1956.īuddhism features three marks of existence. Long before talk of the technological singularity, the point at which human-computer interfaces are seamless, Asimov was considering the future fate of a post bio-mechanical humanity.īefore we pondered transhumanism, techno-pagansim and cyber-shamanism, Asimov wondered about the epistemological truths that might be whispered by the ghosts in the machines. Before Douglas Adams posited that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything was 42, Isaac Asimov was pondering the same question.
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