Taking Courses at the Local APM
by Bob Robinson
IT’S 7:30 A.M. You polish up your term paper (actually, you fill in the blanks on the cover page of the paper you purchased on-line), copy it onto a floppy, throw on your coat and rush out the door, mumbling something about being late for work. You rush down to the nearest 24-hour convenience store and
notice with dismay that you are sixth in line for the Automatic Professor Machine. After an interminable wait, you reach the APM and type in your keyword. A soft, courteous voice greets you.
“Welcometo the Automatic Professor Machine, your personalized adventure
in interactive learning. Please enter your Personal Identification
Number now.” You key in your PIN. “Thank you,”
says APM. “How can I help you?”
You punch a number of buttons and put your floppy into the disk
drive. Seconds later, a 7″ x 10″ parchment-like
“Partner’s Degree Quickly” pops out of the APM,
along with your floppy.
“Congratulations,” says APM. “You have just earned your P.D.Q. in Electronic Design Theory. Only 18 more P.D.Q.s are required for your B.A. in Graphic
& Communications Design. “Would you like to register for your next P.D.Q. now?”
Sound a little off the wall? Actually, according to longtime technology critic and Professor of Political Science, Dr. Langdon Winner, Automatic Professor Machines might be only a slight stretch in tomorrow’s world of distance
learning, on-line degrees and computerized classrooms. The
Department of Science and Technology Studies professor at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, has fashioned
a prototype of the fictional device. It looks like an ATM
and would be found in the same high-traffic areas: supermarkets,
airports, car washes, restaurants and more.
Winner says he created his APM, and a fictional university to go
with it, in hopes of making people think twice about the “current
craze for on-line education.” He even created an alter ego,
L. C. Winner, C.E.O. of Educational Smart Hardware Alma Mater,
Inc., or EDU-SHAM, to present his machine to students and
educators across the country. In an interview with Art Fricke
of WRPI Radio in Troy, New York, L. C. (C for Cyberspace)
explained his relationship with Langdon.
“Professor Winner and I are entirely different in a lot of ways. I tend
to believe in all the things he strongly opposes. For example,
I’m enthusiastic just about any and all new technologies–computer
networks, fusion power, human cloning, genetic engineering,
the Strategic Defense Initiative, space colonies, lean production,
corporate re-engineering and things of that kind. As you know,
Langdon is often highly skeptical of these exciting developments….Can
you believe that! Frankly, I’ll never understand the guy.”
L.C. goes on to explain how EDU-SHAM plans to establish its new
GlowBall University™. “Our college is composed entirely of
software, digital bits, and communications links,” he said.
“We’ve done away with all the costly material and institutional
ballast of traditional colleges. That’s what enables EDU-SHAM
to offer our individualized knowledge products to the consumer
at rock bottom prices.”
A student could complete his or her entire educational career
without ever setting foot on a college campus… and still get
the advantages of personalized teaching. “…[T]he software
for the Automatic Professor Machine is fully personalized
and interactive,” L. C. said. “As soon as you type in your
PIN number, the computer will remember who you are, what you
are interested in, which classes you have taken before, what
term papers you’ve written in the past, your yearly income,
musical tastes, marital status–in short, it will know you
and speak to you on a friendly First Name Basis™. This is
personalized learning at its best.
“It’s long been known that perhaps the most personal education comes
in a one-on-one dialogue between student and teacher. At EDU-SHAM
that’s how we see the role of computers in learning today.
Only in this case it’s a fiber optic cable with the Automatic
Professor Machine on one end and the student on the other.
The faculty/student ratio meets the classical ideal to perfection:
it’s always One-on-One™.”
The complete interview is available online. Dr. Langdon Winner is a political theorist, and satirist, who focuses upon social and political issues that surround modern technological change. He is the author of Autonomous
Technology (MIT Press, 1977), a study of the idea of “technology-out-of-control” in modern social thought, The Whale and The Reactor: A Search
for Limits in an Age of High Technology (University of Chicago
Press, 1988), and editor of Democracy in a Technological Society.
In a 1999 interview with Educom Review (www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/erm9910.html),
Winner tied his skepticism of technology to what he called
administrative misuse.
“…[W]hat’s ultimately at stake are the underlying philosophies of teaching
and learning,” Winner said. “What I see too often
in both K-12 schools and colleges is people saying: Okay,
here’s a bunch of computers–now what in the world are we
going to do with them?”
Winner added that education ought to make use of the full range of
equipment that is available to them. “If you are taking a
yoga class, you had better have a mat to sit on,” he said.
“If you are in a pottery class, you should have a pottery
wheel and a kiln. If you’re studying chemistry, at some point
you’ll need an adequate laboratory. I find it odd that so
many of the tools available to us are now heavily discounted
because we have digital electronics. It’s a strange mania.”
Winner’s view of the technology “mania” can be fully explored by going
to his web site, www.rpi.edu/~winner/index.html.
It is an interesting trip. It is sometimes hilarious, definitely
informative and often chilling…all at the same time.
