>>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)
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>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.

I'm pretty sure but, as you say, it was when I was a teen :-) If not that then maybe at least Startship Troopers, during their training.
Maybe I have an excuse to re-read now, but I don't think I could take the how-wrong-you-got-it wince.

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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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