Allan Shumaker Wrote:
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> It has been at least 50 years since I read the
> Foundation trilogy. About that time I was learning
> to program computers and it seemed to me that
> Asimov certainly lacked imagination with his rooms
> full of mathematicians calculating probabilities
> by hand. Can't remember much of the plot but do
> remember 'the Mule'.

On the contrary in the first volume when Hari Seldon recruits a new member to the project he has a hand held calculator complete with a touch screen on it. He forces the new member to do the calculations in his head even though he holds the notebook just out of reach. He was decades ahead of Steven Jobs and company. However when you get far enough advanced in almost any field of science you're back to pencil and paper. Einstein didn't use a computer. Feynman wrote his first 'diagrams' on the back of a cocktail napkin. Hawking just had his brain.
>
> I do hope the project comes to fruition just
> because I would like to see how the writers handle
> it.

I do remember it. Yep the Mule was one of the main characters in it.
>
> "The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and
> the Oil Age will end long before the world runs
> out of oil"
>
> -- Sheikh Zaki Yamani