Seeing as how it’s finally Friday, and everybody’s probably tired of hearing about Osama Bin Laden’s death and human shields and gruesome photos and hidden compounds and the pop culture implications and — see what I mean? I’m exhausted just from writing that sentence. The point is, we could all use a little brain candy at this point, and seeing as how I’ve just stumbled upon this great old video of Isaac Asimov predicting the future, we’re in luck.

Right before he died, Isaac Asimov — one of the most influential science and science fiction writers (and bearer of some of the best sideburns) of all time — conducted a series of interviews for a TV program he was putting together. The interviews were eventually turned into a brief but fantastic documentary called “Visions of the Future”, and it collects Asimov’s thoughts on exactly that. Watch as he nails predictions about computer culture and makes predictions for the future of humankind, with prescient observations like this:

Perhaps the most revolutionary development of recent years has been that of the computer. Because for the first time we’ve discovered a machine that can substitute, at least in part, the human brain. Before that, it was just a matter of saving human muscles, of using machinery to spare what human muscles couldn’t do very well.”

It’s good stuff:

Via Brain Pickings

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Image: agitprop via Flickr/CC BY