[falcor84]

I reread it now[0], and while I remembered the premise, I totally forgot about this part at the end, giving them a practical motivation for manual calculations:

"A ship that can navigate space without a computer on board can be constructed in one-fifth the time and at one-tenth the expense of a computer-laden ship. We could build fleets five time, ten times, as great as Deneb could if we could but eliminate the computer."

But this of course is nonsensical with current technology, same as it would be nonsensical to go back to manual agriculture or manual manufacturing - we can achieve so much more with our tools than without them. And the way I see it, as long as we have an incentive to advance the state of the art, people will have an incentive (and curiosity) to learn how we got where we are, so that they could push the envelope.

[0] https://ia803006.us.archive.org/6/items/TheFeelingOfPower/Th...