Clarke may have dreamt up the artificial satellite...

[Ross Van Loan]

; Heinlein gave us Future History, but Isaac Asimov invented Big Data!  The  Psychohistory of the Foundation series utilizes, "the assumption that the human conglomerate being dealt with is sufficiently large for valid statistical treatment." (Foundation. P-19) That's right, kids! Asimov makes statistics a  cool all galaxy spanning superpower! How's that for Geek chic? We don't need Jedi : we have Statisticians to save galactic civilization!