The Feeling of Power

"The Feeling of Power" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the February 1958 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction, and was reprinted in the 1959 collection Nine Tomorrows, the 1969 retrospective Opus 100, and the 1986 collection Robot Dreams. In the introduction to Robot Visions, Asimov lists this story as one of the notable robot stories.In the distant future, humans live in a computer-aided society and have forgotten the fundamentals of mathematics, including even the rudimentary skill of counting.The Terrestrial Federation is at war with Deneb, and the war is conducted by long-range weapons controlled by computers which are expensive and hard to replace.