"Mack Reynolds - Trample an Empire Down" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

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Chapter 1



Morris Malone was unhappy. His latest attempt to get a job had fallen flat on its face, as always. He had
educated himself to teach history, and while still in school the profession was automated—ultra-mated,
they were beginning to call it these days—out from under him. With the coming of television and Tri-Di,
and of the National Data Banks, the old form of teaching, was passe. No more, a teacher sitting before a
few dozen students in a school classroom.



He didn't deny that the new system was more practical. In the past, the teacher had to address himself to
the average pupil in the class. Those that were slow failed to understand, and those who were bright
were bored. Today, in his own home, the pupil could go as fast or as slowly as he wished, consulting by
phone screen, when necessary, the tutor who had been assigned him in that particular subject. It didn't
apply to some subjects of course, such as laboratory sciences or physical education, but it applied with a
vengeance to history. There were tens of thousands of canned lectures, on every level, and hundreds of
thousands of books, in the National Data Banks teaching section. Only a handful of history teachers held
down jobs, and they were selected by the computers on the basis of their ability quotients.



He sighed and stared out the window of his small suburban house. As far as the eye could see there
were almost identical houses. A somewhat ant-like existence, he thought. But at least it was better than
living in a high-rise apartment house in a pseudo-city.



Morris Malone was in his early thirties and he had never heard of the other, but he strikingly resembled
Henry Fonda at the same age. Right now, he was on the disgruntled side because he couldn't think of
anything he wanted to do that fitted in with his financial situation. He was tired of reading, just recently
having got off his binge of cramming in hopes of getting a job specializing in the Napoleonic Period of
French history. He felt he could recite the whole life story of the Little Corsican. Not that it had done him
any good. The computers had passed him by with great elan.



He could have watched Tri-Di but he hated canned entertainment.