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seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”
don’t want it to rotate so quickly that air circulation patterns produce impossibly stormy conditions or so slowly that temperature variation patterns are extreme. It’s a property that’s self-selective.
Galactic Standard Day must come from Earth!”
In our hyperspatial Jumps, however, we do something outside the conditions under which relativity operates and the rules are different. Hyperspatially the Galaxy is a tiny object—ideally a nondimensional dot—and there are no relativistic effects at all.
“In fact, in the mathematical formulations of cosmology, there are two symbols for the Galaxy: Gr for the ‘relativistic Galaxy,’ where the speed of light is a maximum, and Gh for the ‘hyperspatial Galaxy,’ where speed does not really have a meaning. Hyperspatially the value of all speed is zero and we do not move; with reference to space itself, speed is infinite. I can’t explain things a bit more than that.
not a lawless assemblage, Speaker. Without much in the way of precedent
guide us, we will lean in your direction, recognizing that if our too-human abilities should cause us to deviate from absolute justice, it is better to allow the guilty to go free than to convict the innocent.
As you should know better than anyone, another characteristic of Imperial
decay was a sudden interest in earlier—and presumably better—times.
“Human beings are diurnal in nature, after all. It seems to me that among the very first tasks of a developing technology would be the conversion of night to day. In fact, if a world lacked technology and developed one, you ought to be able to follow the progress of technological development by the increase in light
How long would it take, do you suppose, to go from uniform darkness to uniform light?”
Technology, in the eyes of all the Galaxy, has been associated with the Foundation, and wherever the Foundation is unpopular, there is a tendency to cling to the past—except, of course, as far as weapons of war are concerned. I assure you Sayshell is quite modern in that respect.”
“Radioactivity. The whole planetary surface is radioactive because of nuclear reactions that went out of control, or nuclear explosions—I’m not sure—and now no life is possible there.”
aspire to something even if it is beyond your
robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3) A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.’
abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it.”
