Learning Machine

Affiliation: Psychlo/Chinko

Employed by a variety of alien races, the learning machine uses a system of cross-association drills composed of symbols, sounds and words to accelerate learning speed. Subject information is stored on discs.

At an even more advanced level, it uses a piercing beam of “sunlight” to impart information directly, beneath the conscious level-cramming years of education into weeks and months.

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“Jonnie gazed at the machine. It could teach him in the ordinary way. It could teach him by speeding the lesson up. And it could teach him very smoothly and instantly with a beam of ‘sunlight.’ …

“Life became a long parade of disks, stacks of disks. Every hour not needed for sleep was spent at the table—with straight picture learning, with progressively speeding cross-association, with the piercing beams of ‘sunlight.’” (Part 2, Chapter 7 Battlefield Earth)