The Danny Dunn books were a series of 15 science fiction adventure books, published in the late 1950’s and into the 60’s, about Danny, who’s a red-headed, adventurous, all-American boy who loves mathematics and science. Danny lives with his widowed mother, the live-in housekeeper for Professor Euclid Bullfinch, a researcher and inventor who works for Midston University. In Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, Danny is flanked by his two friends Irene and Joe as the trio experiment with getting Professor Bullfinch’s new mini-computer, Miniac aka Minny, to do their homework for them.
As dated as the science is in this book, I think this particular Danny Dunn adventure has a lot to say about present day technology and our relationship to it. Professor Bullfinch, in the story, has invented a computer that is much smaller and faster and more powerful than the actual computers (IBM) available in 1958. However, when Irene says to the professor that Miniac is “a kind of Superman”, the professor disagrees.
The Professor shook his head. “No, my dear,” he said. “It is only a kind of supertool. Everything in this machine is inside the human head, in the much smaller space of the human brain. Just think of it–all the hundreds of thousands of switches, core memory planes, miles of wires, tubes–all that’s in that big case and in this console–are all huge an awkward compared to the delicate tiny cells of the human brain which is capable of doing as much as, or more than, the best of these machines. It’s the human brain which can produce a mechanical brain like this one.”
“The computer can reason,” he went on. “It can do sums and give information and draw logical conclusions, but it can’t create anything. It could give you all the words that rhyme with moon, for instance, but it couldn’t put them together into a poem. . . . It’s a wonderful, complex tool, but it has no mind. It doesn’t know it exists.”
Professor Bullfinch goes away to a conference and leaves Danny in charge of Miniac. That’s when Danny and his two friends impulsively decide that it would be a great idea to program Miniac to do their homework for them. They don’t think of it as cheating, just using a tool like a pencil or a typewriter, but better, to help them do their homework more effectively. Complications ensue.
So many ideas are embedded in this simple story, so many questions to discuss. Are computers just a learning tool? is it fair for some students to have access to a computer while others do not? What about AI (artificial intelligence)? AI can write poems and produce art and author stories and more. Is AI just another tool? Does ChatGPT “know it exists”? Will AI applications become self-aware in the future?
Some people, called trans-humanists believe that AI and humans will someday soon be able to emerge, creating trans-humans with super intelligence and abilities. Although discussion of this particular fallacy (and I do believe it’s a false and potentially evil goal) would not be appropriate for most of the students who would be reading Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, elementary school students should be introduced to the issues and questions surrounding the use of computers and AI. I don’t a better way to introduce these topics than a quick read of Danny Dunn—and much discussion.
This book is the first Danny Dunn story I remember reading. I was aware of these books as a child, but I wasn’t too interested in science at the time, so they didn’t really appeal to me. The science in these books was said to have been up to date and based on a solid science foundation at the time. The authors consulted with IBM and toured their facility while writing Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine.
Content considerations: The book has some 1950’s language and behaviors that have become somewhat unacceptable in our “enlightened times.” Joe and Irene get into an argument when Joe blames Irene and women in general for some trouble that kids are having. Irene pushes Eddie “Snitcher” Phillips into a mud puddle in retaliation for his tattling on them and their homework machine. And it is implied that Irene has a mild crush on Danny, or vice-versa. The children are in eighth grade in this particular story.