Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Kerouac and Burroughs on Instructional Technology

Cover of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by Jack Kerouac and William S. BurroughsI was surprised to find Beat Generation authors Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs expressing a view on instructional technology for delivering open university courses in 1945. This is in Chapter 7 of their early, and not very good, semi-autobiographical novel: "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks". One of the characters expresses the view that recordings of university lectures will be broadcast by radio 24 hours a day, allowing access for anyone. The narrator of the story expresses skepticism over this idea.

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