Thinking Machines
It is a curious fact that in America, a supposedly highly literate nation, a hardcover book is one of the year's top twenty-five bestsellers if it manages to sell only 115 thousand copies---enough for about one-twentieth of 1 percent of the population. Gone With the Wind has sold 21 million copies over forty years, but 55 million people saw the first half of the movie on television in one evening. Roots has sold 5 million copies over eight years, but 130 million people watched the television version.Roughly 27 million American adults are functionally illiterate---about one in every five. Every year almost three-quarters of a million American high school students drop out, while another three-quarters of a million graduate unable to read. In addition, the percentage of students graduating from high school has decreased every year since 1984. The social problems causing the dropout are serious, and most are unrelated to books; yet, while electronic books are obviously no cure-all, they may help to reverse the trend away from social involvement. Since talking books de-emphasize literacy, they may also help enfranchise the illiterate, the dyslexic, the blind, the disabled, the elderly, and the young.
We have the books we have today, not because they're in the best possible form they can be in, but because paper technology limits what they can be. It need no longer do so. For example, imagine learning orbital mechanics through a video game that lets us choose burn rate and burn time, then shows us what happens to the rocket. Once our interest is captured, the book could explain more of the physics involved. Or imagine a chemistry book that lets us bring together different molecules and watch what the atomic forces do to them, following through until the molecules reach a stable state. What about a biology book that takes us inside a working cell, letting us see the cell in operation and showing us what each part does under normal or disease conditions?
Perhaps a future mathematics book will let us choose our own parameters for mathematical functions, displaying what happens to their derivatives or, even, dispensing with simplistic calculus models entirely let us work directly with simulations. Imagine a statistics book that dispenses with artificial measures like averages and standard deviations and gives us the raw information and lets us interact with it. Imagine a physics book with an animated Galileo, Newton, and Einstein to explain their various theories, then guide us through the consequences, letting us ask questions or suggest alternatives. (As computer technology improves, we might change our guide to whomever we wish: perhaps a favorite aunt, Bugs Bunny, or Queen Elizabeth II.)
Imagine a computer book that lets us tour a computer chip. The book first displays a chip as we normally see it---a black fleck of shiny sili- con. The book has two controls: a joystick and a light-dimmer switch. As we move the joystick, the book displays the image we would see if we were at the chosen distance and point of view. The dimmer switch controls the time scale; twisting it changes the speed at which things happen.
Pressing down on the joystick brings up a quarter-scale display in the lower right-hand corner with text, voice, or a video of the author explaining what we're seeing and pointing out other interesting things we might like to see. As our viewpoint approaches the surface of the chip, it expands to cover the entire display; then the horizon disappears off the screen entirely. As we move in we see pulsating rivers of light representing electron flows, and we hear a whispery rustle representing thermal noise, which grows to a keening roar as we get nearer one of the rivers of light.
At even closer range, and further reducing the time scale, we see individual clumps of electrons switching through individual gates. The sound also slows, so we can hear each electron whizzing by. Zooming in yet closer we see a single electron about to tunnel out of a channel.
Pricier versions of these electronic books could replace the joystick and dimmer switch with touch-sensitive screens and simple vocal commands: stop, go, faster, slower, zoom here, pan around, what is that, show me more, tell me why.
And what works for technical subjects can work for anything else. For example, imagine an electronic atlas that opens with a rotating globe. We learn about different parts of the globe by touching it. We can then find out about the geography, history, politics, culture, or economics of each area. Touching economics brings up overlays showing trading partners, trade routes, and goods. Touching any trade good, from tractors to video cameras, gives us information on the source of all the raw materials used to make it.
Activating another portion of the display tells us something about a region's history, geology, demographics, transportation systems, climatology, political allies, nearness to major fault lines, chlorofluorocarbon emission rate and projected five-year development, skin cancer rate over the past decade and next-decade projections assuming various levels of ozone depletion.
Another portion of the globe might let us model and extrapolate land use and deforestation rates over time to examine the effect of different tariff levels; or measure the effect of waste heat from cities on fish populations, of power lines on bird migratory paths, or of global warming on coastlines and industries.
Touching yet another portion gives us the region's Nobel prize winners---with vocal explanations of their achievements---or displays photos of local politicians. We could look at a breakdown of the region's gross product, along with government budgetary expenditures and fiscal projections for the next year. Perhaps we want to know about the effect of solar flares on the region's satellite reconnaissance, or the region's offshore natural gas deposits, or the epidemiology of retroviral disease. Whatever our interest, all portions of the display could be in color and could be accompanied by movie snippets, stills, voiceovers, and music. For us, the world would become, literally, an open book.
We could have tourbooks for trees or television sets, space shuttles or lungs, solar systems or whales. A computer book could let us build a model of a computer and run it, rather than laboriously trying to teach us how current computers work. A business book could make us president of a corporation, then teach us about the business practices we need as we try to run the company. A classical music composition book could make us a conductor or concertmaster or second chair flute, simulating the music from other orchestra members as we learn to establish the tempo and interpretation.
When students have such books the role of teachers will change. Reading one of these books on, say, cosmology, isn't like studying cosmology; it's more like becoming a cosmologist. Think what an adventure interacting with such books would be. We would feel more empowered, more in control of our own learning, because we would be building models of things within the book itself. We would be learning for ourselves, not being talked at.
The Frailties of Print