>or find themselves reading/watching "training spools" - some of them so deft at it that they can read the punch hole patterns as if they were text (e.g. Space Cadet - Heinlein)

Believe it or not, the local library has a copy of this in its "New Fiction - SF" collection. I remember the "training spools" but have no recollection about reading the punch hole patterns. I'll have to check it out. This gives me a legitimate excuse to re-read a book primarily aimed at pre-teens and young teens....Thanks.

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>or when the hero can hear the "relays" clicking in the on-board computer - like an old telephone exchange
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>or when the powerful computer is now so immense it's housed in its own building
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>>The worst of this kind I read - it seems to me - was when the hero in some SF novel punched information into punched cards, to feed them to the on-board computer. Yech.
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>>>I've often said that Arthur C Clark is very good because his SF always uses only plausible scenarios and adheres strictly to the laws of physics (science faction). It's often been said that his work was very prophectic, and that much of what he predicted (such as comms satellites) came to pass (and he is always ready to boast about this himself).
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>>>Get this. I'm just reading one of his more obscure novels, "The Sands of Mars" (1951 - which I bought from a charity shop). In it, there's a SF writer on board a vessel to Mars, to record the journey. I'm only part way through but: the writer uses a film camera to record the take-off - no video, has to adjust light meters etc., he uses a type-writer for the story, he uses a lot of bandwidth sending faxes of his typescript back to his publisher on Earth, the crew have to wade though thick books on astrogation and, I suspect, work it out with pencil and slide rule, they still use "tubes" in their circuitry.
>>>
>>>It's always irked me that old SF writers couldn't have envisaged the likes of: mobile phones, hand-held computers and calculators, a solid-state recording device with a lens and mike, a word processor or one that's part of the mini computer, digital telephony, etc.
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>>>But even here, somewhat ironically, he still scores, in that while the crew are discussing the likes of Jules Vernes and the eponymous author's older work`, it's stated (somewhat smugly to my mind) that nothing dates quicker than old SF that's been superceded by subsequent discoveries, or when the fiction becomes fact (e.g like when Man has gone to the Moon)
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>>>Or is he hoist by his own petards? :-)