21-nelson74-4web2

21. Computer Lib

/Dream Machines

1974

307

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Dreams

Technology is an expression of man’s dreams. If man

did not indulge his fantasies, his thoughts alone

would inhibit the development of technology itself.

Ancient visionaries spoke of distant times and places,

where men flew around and about, and some could

see each other at great distance. The technological

realities of today are already obsolete and the future

of technology is bound only by the limits of our

dreams. Modern communications media and in

particular electronic media are outgrowths and

extensions of those senses which have become

dominant in our social development. 

How Wachspress, “Hyper-Reality.”

© Auditac Ltd. 1973.

“When you’re dealing with media you’re in show

business, you know, whether you like it or not.”

“Show business,” he said. “Absolutely. We’ve gotta be in

show business. We’ve gotta put together a team that

will get us there.”

I made a mental note to use the show business

metaphor again, and continued, “IBM’s real creative

talent probably lies in other areas . . .”

Heywood Gould, Corporation Freak (Tower), 23.

(The following article appeared in the September, 1970

issue of Computer Decisions, and got an extraordinary amount

of attention. I have changed my views somewhat—we all go

through changes, after all—but after consideration have

decided to re-run it in the original form, without

qualifications, mollifications or anything, for its unity.

Thanks to Computer Decisions for use of the artwork by Gans

and for the Superstudent picture on the cover, whose artist

unfortunately insists on preserving his anonymity.

An interesting point, incidentally, is that people read this a

lot of different ways. One Dean of Education hilariously

misread it as an across-the-board plug for CAI. Others read in

it various forms of menace or advocacy of generalized

mechanization. One letter-writer said 

I was a menace but at

least writing articles kept me off the streets. Here is my

fundamental point: computer-assisted instruction, applied

thoughtlessly and imitatively, threatens to extend the worst

features of education as it is now.

Ladies and gentlemen, the age of prestidigitative

presentation and publishing is about to begin.

Palpitating presentations, screen-scribbled, will

dance to your desire, making manifest the many

mysteries of winding wisdom. But if we are to

rehumanize an increasingly brutal and

disagreeable world, we must step up our efforts.

And we must hurry. Hurry. Step right up.

Theodor H. Nelson, “Barnum-Tronics.”

Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin, Dec 1970, 

12–15.

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the

NEWMEDIA

READER

by Theodor H. Nelson

The Nelson Organization

New York

Some think the educational system is basically all right, and

more resources would get it working again. Schools would do

things the same way, except more so, and things would get

better.

In that case the obvious question would be, how can

computers help? How can computers

usefully supplement and extend the

traditional and accepted forms of teaching?

This is the question to which present-day

efforts in “computer-assisted instruction”

—called CAI—seem to respond.

But such an approach is of no possible

interest to the new generation of critics of

our school system—people like John Holt

(Why Children Fail), Jonathan Kozol (Death

at an Early Age) and James Herndon (The

Way It Spozed to Be). More and more, such

people are severely questioning the

general framework and structure of the

way we teach.

These writers describe particularly ghastly examples of our

schooling conditions. But such horror stories aside, we are

coming to recognize that schools as we know them appear

designed at every level to sabotage the supposed goals of edu-

cation. A child arrives at school bright and early in his life. By

drabness we deprive him of interests. By fixed curriculum

and sequence we rob him of his orientation, initiative and

motivation, and by testing and scoring we subvert his natural

intelligence.

Schools as we know them all run on the same principles:

iron all subjects flat than then proceed, in groups, at a forced

march across the flattened plain. Material is dumped on the

students and their responses calibrated; their interaction and

involvements with the material is not encouraged nor taken

into consideration, but their dutifulness of response is

carefully monitored.

While an exact arrangement of intended motivations for

the student is preset within the system, they do not usually

take effect according to the ideal. It is not that students are

unmotivated, but motivated askew. Rather than seek to

achieve in the way they are supposed to, students turn to

churlishness, surliness, or intellectual sheepishness. A general

human motivation is god-given at the beginning and warped

or destroyed by the educational process as we know it; thus

we internalize at last that most fundamental of grownup

goals: just to get through another day.

Because of this procedure our very notion of

human ability has suffered. Adult mentality is

cauterized, and we call it “normal.” Most people’s

minds are mostly turned off most of the time. We

know virtually nothing of human abilities except as

they have been pickled and boxed in schools; we need

to ignore all that and start fresh. To want students to

be “normal” is criminal, when we are all so far below

our potential. Buckminster Fuller, in I Seem to Be a

Verb, says we are all born geniuses: Sylvia Ashton-

Warner tells us in Teacher of her success with this

premise, and of the brilliance and creative potential

she was able to find in all her schoolchildren.

Curricula themselves destructively arrange the

study situation. By walls between artificially segregated

“studies” and “separate topics” we forbid the pursuit of

interest and kill motivation.

In ordinary schooling, the victim cannot orient himself to

the current topic except by understanding the official angle

of approach and presentation. Though tie-ins to previous

interests and knowledge are usually the best way to get an

initial sense of a thing, there is only time to consider the

officially presented tie-ins. (Neither is there time to answer

questions, except briefly and rarely well—and usually in a

way that promotes “order” by discouraging “extraneous” tie-

ins from coming up.)

The unnecessary division and walling of subjects,

sequencing and kibbling of material lead people to expect

simplifications, to feel that naming a thing is understanding

it, to fear complex wholes; to believe creativity means

21. Computer Lib

/Dream Machines

308

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