Better Than Open Book: Open-Google!

And you thought Dinosaurs was easy. The latest in amazing Core technology may be “QR 48: Bits,” which plans to take open-book to the next level by making its final “open-Google.”

McKay Professor of Computer Science Harry R. Lewis ’68’s proposal—currently awaiting the registrar’s approval—would issue a laptop computer to every student come exam time this spring. The idea is part of Lewis’s unique take on memorization: he thinks it’s so 20th century. If you can just point, click, and Google to get whatever information you want, why should you ever be asked to know it yourself?

Lewis, who as Dean of the College has also made improving students’ quality of life a priority, insists that the course’s final is the “least interesting piece” of his class. And while other topics on the syllabus—intellectual property law, glass fibers, and the application of quantitative methods to the problem of viruses—may really get you going at 11 a.m. on a Monday, the possibility of taking a final “open-Google” is certainly something to wake up for, too.

Even if the registrar refuses Lewis’s plan, students such as Samuel W. Teller ’08 are already inspired to explore the endless realm of technological possibilities taught in the class. “I don’t care whether Prof. Lewis gives us Google or a Sicilian battle hammer for the final, because by the end of Bits I’m going to know how to build my own final-taking robot from scratch,” Teller wrote in an e-mail. “I’m going to name him ‘Forktron.’”