The professor paused for a moment. “On the other hand, you take the son of a well-to-do family who has a flair for mechanics, or possibly one of the arts or sciences. Unfortunately, his father is a businessman who attended an Ivy League college. He’s going to see his son through the same school and eventually into the family business, if hades freezes over.”

Bert Alshuler grunted understanding.

“Or,” the professor pursued, “the student who does have freedom of choice but the inability to exercise it intelligently. Immediately before enrollment he sees a Tri-Di show involving a sympathetic doctor. Very well. Inspired, he signs up as a pre-med. A year later, bored, he meets an artist, or writer, or whatever, who sends him off on another tangent. Nothing will do but that he enter the arts. Which he does, possibly to his eventual sorrow. Next year…”

“Kay,” Bert Alshuler said. “I get your point. And it sounds valid. But why in the hell should these punch card machines be in a better position to decide than I am?”

“They don’t utilize punched cards any more, my dear Alshuler. But the reason is that they know more about you than you do.”

“Oh, now… really.”

The professor leaned forward again, put his fingertips together and looked very sincere. “But they do, you know. Since your birth, the National Data Banks have been filing away the information on Albert… ah… Alshuler. Not only data on you, but both of your parents. The doctor who presided at your birth recorded all pertinent information. So did every doctor who has treated you since. So have all your teachers. So have all the police with whom you have had dealings. All the information you ever supplied to census takers, to the Internal Revenue offices, to the military, is there, and the results of all the I.Q., Ability Quotient and other tests. You have no idea, my dear Alshuler. The National Data Banks contain information that your own faulty memory has long since forgotten.”