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"If you have a gut response to a story, you are not responding to something new ..you are really responding to a story you were told when you were six or seven…"
- Samuel R. Delany
 |
| Mechanical Teacher | ||
| A computer device able to teach children. |
| Margie went into the classroom. It was right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on and waiting for her. It was always on at the same time every day except Saturday and Sunday, because her mother said little girls learned better if they learned at regular hours.
The screen was lit up, and it said: "Today's arithmetic lesson is on the addition of proper fractions. Please insert yesterday's homework in the proper slot." |
| Technovelgy from The Fun They Had,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Children's Magazine in 1951 Additional resources -
|
The mechanical teacher is further described, after being repaired:
The mechanical teacher was adjusted to fit the needs of each individual child.
Readers may also compare the mechanical teacher with the accelerated schooling made possible by a group of artificially intelligent machines (the City Fathers) from James Blish's 1957 story Cities in Flight.
...there it was again, large and black and ugly, with a big screen on which all the lessons were shown and the questions were asked.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Fun They Had
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Tech news articles related to The Fun They Had
Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov
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