Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
Paul Abela is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Acadia University.
Every passing deserves to be marked.
As I returned to my office at the university where I teach to prepare for the fall term, I encountered a funeral of dead objects in my building’s corridors. As building maintenance was preparing for the arrival of the incoming class, a decision had been made to finally pull the plug.
Yes, the clutter of equipment on trolleys –perhaps “gurneys” captures the spirit of the moment better – signalled a death. The dust-gathering overhead projector was no more.
All things must pass.
My earliest memories of the newly departed begin in senior public school in Toronto’s east end. In grade 8, I recall our math teacher making very heavy use of this piece of equipment as we worked our way through problems. Numbers could be added by hand on the projected screen, calculations made and explained. What wasn’t possible!
Some may remember teachers with their manila folders with transparencies carefully placed in order, their electrostatic properties perpetually frustrating teachers and providing some in-class delight. Getting them on the screen was one thing; getting them back to the folder in any non-sticking intelligible order was apparently a heroic achievement. Left-handed teachers doing real-time additions to their transparencies experienced the frustrations of the rare left-handed medieval scribe as they tried patiently to avoid smudging the projected divine word.
Some models had the capacity to attach scrolls that could be drawn through the projector mechanically, or for the advanced models, by the press of a button. It had something of religious instruction about it. A hush fell upon the classroom as we were thrown into darkness. Then, our classrooms were lit up by a higher power.
In my university life as a student and graduate student, this piece of equipment was a necessary feature in the lecture hall. While Canadian universities were celebrating the built-in lecture hall presence of TV sets that promised a brave new Marshall McLuhan pedagogical future, the dependable and familiar overhead projector stubbornly held its ground. In a relevant sense, that now not-so-young new kid on the block, PowerPoint, is a software extension of the original architecture supplied so generously by the deceased. How the young have secretly benefited from the old!
As a professor, I never had the pleasure of employing the deceased. I’m a chalkboard traditionalist. But I am told by some colleagues that they have fond distant memories of engaging with the dearly departed, with a manila folder or two still gathering dust on the odd office shelf.
With OHP having now joined the choir invisible, classrooms will no longer experience that sensuous hum of the large cooling fan, or the humanism of “Is it me after a late night of drink or the transparency that is out of focus?” That blinding white light that only the Promethean gods of technology could deliver is now fading to black.
New students this year will miss the distraction enjoyed by their predecessors in trying to name the nameless squatter in the corner. Returning students will fail to notice the absence. Life closes up around the dead all too soon. The graveyard of technology is full of indispensable creations.
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Before the last trolley was removed from the corridor, I had a final opportunity to plug in a unit. The light came up, and the two mirrors through the high bridge shone a final unfocused light upon the wall. The fan kicked in, offering a few last breaths. Being without a transparency, I pressed my hand on the warm top screen in a final farewell. I then gently turned off the machine and quietly pulled the plug.
In the white heat of the world of technology, as in life, there are no second acts. The overhead projector is to be sent to the equipment knackery. Its carefully aligned dual mirrors that once transmitted a thousand images right side up – and never inverted! – now to be torn asunder and, if lucky, sold for scrap. No doubt the classroom-length power cords that could never be wound properly will be hungrily melted down for their copper.
And that little square machine that adorned the halls of education from childhood will trip the light fantastic nevermore.