Computers & Controversy
On the Horizon: High-tech Help
Richard B. Larsen
Back in 1963, his finger on the button of the latest of the V-2 descendant, Werner von Braun prophesied that those who ignored technological change were likely to be steamrolled by it--geflattent was his choice of words. Now that computerization has come to virtually every comer of American life, those still indifferent to it may indeed become its victims, the crunched numbers of contemporary society. The Law of the High-tech Jungle reads not "eat or be eaten" but "BYTE or be BITten," and it applies as much to composition teachers as to accountants. For those who have yet to climb aboard the bandwagon, this article offers a last chance before it steamrolls by. The technology reviewed below may at first intimidate, then perhaps overwhelm, but ultimately it will persuade the unconvinced that the art of writing has come as far in the last five or six years as it had in all the decades from Gutenberg to Steve Jobs. Born of solid tradition and the mercurial microprocessor, rhetoric has been reborn.
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The eight state-of-the-art, but nevertheless representative, products described and rated (on a 1-10 scale) here are capable of taking students and teachers afresh through each stage of the writing process. Used with care both in and outside the computerized classroom, they could render the composition instructor's work more effective and rewarding, and, in fact, renovate the profession top to bottom.
Read on, and let the Ned Ludds among us speak now or forever hold their pitchforks.
I. BEGUN (Profitable Software, $195)
Developed with public funding by a professor of computer science,
who then sold the program to Profitable, BEGUN (Beginners
Essay-Generating UNtracker) is an idea-processor whose time has come.
It not only asks a student topic-specific questions but answers them as
well. The program is never at a loss for words on screen, for once a
topic (capital punishment, nuclear winter wrestling, etc.) is typed in,
an exhaustive question-answer sequence begins. If the student has the
time and the patience to wait, within fifteen minutes BEGUN has scrolled
out enough information for a 5000-word report, not to mention a 500-word
theme. All the student has to do then is delete the questions and merge
the answers into some semblance of order, a step that can be
accomplished with the help of another type of software:
idea-organizers such as ORG/IT.
II. ORG/IT (Pineapple Programs, $99.95)
Students who can count to five in Roman numerals should be able to
use the Outline Response Guide/Idea-Trainer (from the Hawaiian
subsidiary of Apple, Inc.) to organize any five-paragraph theme. In
fact, all they need do is overtype the numbers onto the material they
have "invented" for their essays--brainstorm results, for instance--and
the program does the rest, providing an outline, rearranging sentences
into paragraphs, even ordering paragraphs into entire essays if the
student has taken care to provide a keyword title and a thesis
statement. Already in use at several institutions with large sports
programs, ORG/IT has solved athletes' problems
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ranging from simple lack of organizing skill to severe pattern recognition disability. Pineapple claims that this software is also used by many students to organize class notes, even those taken from chaotically disorganized lecturers.
III. MAGIC MODEM (Re-Rising Sun, $395)
Hooked up to any touch-tone telephone, this peripheral device from Japan
enables students to tap into a variety of data banks in order to gather
information for research reports and term papers. Although most students use
it to access the campus library or specialized information sources, a few
students have reported remarkably efficient results with Term Papers, Inc., an
obscure database not on any of the lists supplied to this reviewer by college
and community libraries. Efficiency is a real issue with modems, since
"on-line" in their case means "on-telephone-line": a typical keyboard session
can cost as much as a short call to Katmandu. The potential buyer is thus
advised that modem-use be planned; the device is not really to be used to
compile information for, say, a diagnostic writing sample.
IV. PLAIG-O-MATIC (Tinselware)
This relatively cheap program is reputed to have been developed from
software released by the CIA into public domain. Adapted by Tinselware
to the purposes of higher education, it can load an existing textfile
from any disk to the student's disk, erase the original file title and
provide a new one, and then slightly rearrange word order throughout.
Currently marketed on a black-market basis only, PLAIG-O-MATIC's use is
both discouraged by professors and disavowed by students. Sales are,
nevertheless, reported to be brisk.
V. NEW BOTTLE (Hill-McGraw Pub. Co., $69.95)
Hailed by one reviewer as "the 21st century Handbook," this program
does everything that typical present-day grammar and
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style handbooks do--only automatically. Basically, students enter from their essays the instructor's alphanumeric symbol (14g, awk, dev, etc.), and within nanoseconds the screen feeds back advice such as "Restrict use of present perfect infinitives to actions temporarily preceding that expressed by the main-clause verb." In a process familiar to all, the student then attempts the appropriate revision. Also, entering the word EXAMPLE yields color-coded "correct-incorrect versions of material, while the entry EXERCISE produces a 20-item set for students to correct or rewrite on screen. NEW BOTTLE is marketed, incidentally, with supplement.
VI. ROBOT RITER (Skool Robotix, $9995; workstation included)
Billed as "the Ultimate Writing Aid," this item (also Japanese) is
not a piece of software at all, but a 48-inch-high automaton resembling
in one light C3PO, in another a diminutive Sumo. The designers
apparently did their homework on one-to-one instruction, for this
metal-and-silicon peripheral makes an ideal tutor, skilled in everything
from semicolon-use to oral encouragement (on tape). Actually tutor may
be the wrong word, for ROBOT RITER is programmed not just to provide
help for the student but, in cases of duress (as when its owner has both
a paper and a party due), to compose typed reports and authentically
handwritten essays as well. "Seat ROBOT RITER at its workstation, punch
up a few of the keys on its tummy, stick a pencil in its claw, and the
work will be done long before you return at four a.m. in shape to do
little more than vomit and collapse." So says Robotix' advertising
brochure, and at this point along the road to the 21st century what can
cavil amount to? The handwriting, or clawwriting is already on the wall.
VII. SHEEP (Scam Software, $19.95 and up)
With SHEEP (Self-Help Education-Ending Program), the student who is
in serious trouble not just with composition but with academics in
general enters data from a transcript, real or imaginary, and the
computer prints out a degree on the manufacturer's special SHEEPskin
bond (included). Written into the program are the
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mottoes of over 1000 North American colleges and universities; Latin phrases can be output in a variety of ornate typefaces. Used in combination with a peripheral like MAGIC MODEM, above, SHEEP can also download appropriate graduating-senior data directly into the administrative records of the college of the student's choice. Problems have been encountered by some users, as when in spring 1986 Harvard's administrative mainframe refused to validate the records of some 20,000 graduating seniors, but Scam has announced a software update: forthcoming sets of access codes for West Coast institutions, priced from $19.95 (selection of junior colleges) to $119.95 (Stanford, Caltech, etc.).
VIII. GOTCHA! (Byproduct Products, around $95)
Although not yet on the market, this device, designed for teachers,
is rumored to be able to strategically plot and print red-ink comments
on any 8.5" x 11" page of writing. The instructor simply feeds each
sheet (typed or handwritten) through a special scanner/printer that is
connected to a three-gigabyte mainframe program for parsing, analyzing,
deconstructing, and otherwise thoroughly crunching student work. The
student's work emerges, replete with grade, a moment later. GOTCHA! is
reputed to have gone through a first-draft master's thesis (on Colley
Cibber) in six minutes without blowing a circuit. Unfortunately, the
printout wore through four $12 printer ribbons, but developers say the
solution there is only a matter of adjusting the program to ignore
everything but such essentials as misspelled words and comma splices.
It would seem, then, that in the very near future the work of the writing teacher is going to become fully automated and thus markedly easier. Some administrators speculate, in fact, that it may disappear altogether.