Thursday, February 22, 2001

'Automatic Professor Machine' Is Unveiled -- by a Longtime Technology Critic By JEFFREY R. YOUNG A longtime technology critic has fashioned a prototype of a device that he says could do away with traditional colleges and teachers, replacing them with knowledge-dispensing terminals that look like A.T.M.'s. The fictional device, called the Automatic Professor Machine, spoofs the ever-rising wave of education-technology products on college campuses. Langdon Winner with the A.P.M. prototype. Its inventor, Langdon Winner, has staged satirical news conferences unveiling the machine on campuses and at educational meetings around the country. Mr. Winner, a professor of political science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who has long criticized e-learning, says he hopes the Automatic Professor Machine will make people stop and think about the current craze for online education. In the spirit of distance education, the professor has placed a video recording of his mock news conference on his World Wide Web site. In the 25-minute video, Mr. Winner plays the role of a slick entrepreneur named L.C. Winner, C.E.O. of EDU-SHAM, Educational Smart Hardware Alma Mater Inc. He delivers a PowerPoint presentation about the future of education and the many products his virtual company is developing, including a "wearable university" that delivers courseware via a university T-shirt. Here's how L.C. Winner says the A.P.M. would work: Students would walk up to one of the computer terminals -- installed at convenient locations like fast-food restaurants, prisons, and colleges -- and select a course or degree from a menu. Then students would insert a few hundred dollars and a floppy disk to retrieve lessons from a central database. The students would place their completed lessons back in an A.P.M. terminal to get their grades and an instant diploma. Mr. Winner says his presentation is a reaction to what he sees as a lack of critical attention to education technology. "I thought the debate about education and technology had gone too far in one direction. It was sort of all enthusiasts and all people going, 'This is the wave of the future.'" The professor has long had an interest in satire. In 1969, while he was a music critic and editor for Rolling Stone, Mr. Winner helped create the Masked Marauders, a band that spoofed rock "supergroups" that brought together stars from various popular bands. The rock band included musicians who imitated Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison. Stay tuned. Mr. Winner says he's planning a musical sendup of distance education -- a song called "March of the Distant Educators." He says the song will combine the grandeur of "Pomp and Circumstance" with the catchiness of an advertising jingle. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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