Yeah, I do think the thing that will date most 20th century science fiction is that it usually has humans actively doing most things, like mining, piloting space ships, fighting battles, etc. When it seems more likely that almost all of that will be done by AIs, with humans directing them at best.

Regarding space sci-fi in particular, the image of a human manually piloting a space ship is iconic in both Western and Soviet fiction. Before the advent of real world human spaceflight era, it could be linked both to the lack of understanding of computers and other technical systems, along with the eternal popularity of the heroic explorer/captain/pilot archetype. However, even as public knowledge of space exploration has advanced, this portrayal persists in fiction.

We humans just like good engaging stories, even if they are not always realistic.

It might still make sense to pilot a ship manually for landing or proximity operations.

Even deep space maneuvers can be done manually if you know what you are doing - point ship engines in right direction and thrust for right number of seconds/minutes.

Sure, for stuff like orbital launch, some crazier Oberth effect burns or continuous thrust propulsion (ion, solar sail) you definitely want computer control.

For modern spacecraft such as Dragon capsule, almost all operations are completely automated by default: launch, landing, ISS docking. Manual overrides exist, but they are intended to be used only as a backup in case of a computer failure.

I can see an argument for manual landing on another cosmic body, given the famous story of Neil Armstrong saving Apollo 11 landing by manually landing the capsule. Though the latest generation of lunar landers can perform the procedure fully autonomously, using machine vision to find an optimal landing spot.

I tried looking up, whether manual or automated moon landing is planned for HLS program, but couldn't find anything specific. It's probably going to be some mix of both.

Probably more like AI doing everything and very few humans overriding a few things here and there, negative things.

> they just couldn’t quite imagine the computer

Or they imagined that such devices would be much more powerful but much less general than what we actually have. The card showing books being shredded and fed into students by headphone looks like a computer to me even though it is cranked manually. Quite a lot of my software development career was dedicated to programs that transformed knowledge in one form (specifications and domain expertise) into knowledge in a different form (detailed drawings, bills of materials, and descriptions of the final product.

> Perhaps this hints that our vision of the future should have us doing less.

People in Matrix movies were not doing much.

Good catch.

It's unskilled. People will still be performing feats of dexterity, strength, courage, and genius in the future. They won't be shoving books into a woodchipper.